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 BR 45 .H36 v. 8 
 
 Walker, Norman Lockhart 
 
 Scottish church history 
 
T. and T. Clark's Publications. 
 
 In crown 8vo, Third Edition, price 5s., 
 
 THE NEWER CRI ICISM 
 
 AND THE 
 
 ANALOGY OF THE FAITH. 
 
 A REPLY 
 
 TO LECTURES BY W. ROBERTSON SMITH, M.A., ON THE 
 OLD TESTAMENT IN THE JEWISH CHURCH. 
 
 By EOBERT WATTS, D.D., 
 
 PROFESSOR OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY IN THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY'S 
 COLLEGE, BELFAST. 
 
 ' Every candid inquirer, of whatever tendency, must hail such a work as 
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 thereto.' — British and Foreign Evangelical Review. 
 
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 the attempts made in so many quarters to invalidate the divine origin of the 
 Old Testament revelation.' — English Churchman. 
 
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 done. . . . Dr. Watts deserves the thanks of the various evangelical churches 
 for his manly, scholarly, and seasonable treatise.' — Presbyterian Churchman. 
 
 Students of God's word will owe a debt of gratitude to the author for the 
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 demonstrated their utter good-for-nothingness.' — Neio York Observer. 
 
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 son Smith. . . . Any scholar who wants evidence of the unsatisfactoriness of 
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 ' There are many important topics discussed in this exhaustive Reply which 
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 work well deserves a careful perusal, and deserves to be extensively circulated.' 
 — Reformed Presbyterian Witness. 
 
 a 
 
T. and T. Clark's Publications. 
 
 PROFESSOR GODET'S NEW WORK. 
 
 Just published, in crown %vo, price 6s., 
 
 LECTURES IN DEFENCE OF THE 
 CHRISTIAN FAITH. 
 
 By PROF. F. GODET, Neuchatel. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 THE HON. AND REV. CANON LYTTELTON, M.A., 
 
 RECTOR OF HAGLEY. 
 
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HANDBOOKS 
 
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 EDITED BY 
 
 REV. MARCUS DODS, D.D., 
 
 AND 
 
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 WALKER'S SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 EDINBURGH: 
 
 T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET. 
 
 1882. 
 
1'RINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB, 
 FOR 
 
 T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH. 
 
 LONDON HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO. 
 
 DUBLIN, ... GEORGE HERBERT. 
 
 NEW YORK, . . . SCRIBNER AND WELFORD. 
 
SCOTTISH 
 CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. NORMAN L. WALKER, 
 
 DYSART. 
 
 EDINBURGH: 
 T. & T. CLARK, 3 S GEORGE STREET. 
 
 1882. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. THE CHURCH OF THE FIRST CENTURIES, 
 II. HOW SCOTLAND CAME TO BE ROMANIZED, 
 III. WHAT LED TO A REVOLT, 
 IV. THE REFORMATION, 
 V. PRESBYTERY AND PRELACY, 
 VI. UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH, 
 VII. THE PERSECUTING TIMES, . 
 VIII. THE REVOLUTION ESTABLISHMENT, 
 IX. THE SECESSIONS, 
 
 X. THE ERA OF MODERATISM, . 
 XI. THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL, 
 XII. CONFLICT AND DISRUPTION, 
 
 PAGE 
 I 
 
 12 
 
 18 
 
 26 
 40 
 62 
 70 
 
 37 
 101 
 in 
 127 
 142 
 
PEL 
 
 
 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE CHURCH OF THE FIRST CENTURIES. 
 
 When Agricola invaded Scotland, toward the close of the first 
 century, he found the country black with forests. For that reason 
 alone we may conclude that the population was small and scat- 
 tered. The natives mustered, indeed, in considerable numbers 
 when there were battles to fight, but the proportion of combatants 
 to a whole people was immensely greater in those days than it is 
 now, and the size of the armies they were able to bring into the 
 field gives little idea either of the strength of the tribes which the 
 Romans had to encounter, or of the extent to which these tribes 
 were allied to one another. That there was then no united nation 
 is absolutely certain. The country was loosely occupied by 
 different communities or clans, each with its separate chieftain. 
 And it is more than probable that these communities did not all 
 come originally from the same stock. The country is so situated 
 that it can be reached from all quarters, — from England, from 
 Ireland, from Scandinavia, from the European Continent, — and 
 we see no reason for assuming that that mingling of races which 
 appears as taking place during the historic period had never 
 occurred in earlier times. Whether the ancient Caledonii were 
 all painted, and whether that was what secured for them, to begin 
 with, the common name of Picti, is still a debated point among 
 the antiquaries. But supposing it to be settled that such was 
 
2 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 the case, we should still be as much in the dark as ever with 
 regard to the original homes of the inhabitants. All that we 
 certainly know is, that there are unmistakable memorials in 
 our soil, in our language, and in our mythology — first, of an 
 aboriginal population; and, secondly, of successive visits paid 
 to our shores by Norsemen, Romans, Teutons, and Gaels. The 
 Roman invasion must have been of special value to the country 
 in several ways, and very notably in this way, that it helped to 
 make us a nation. Long after they retired, indeed, the land was 
 still divided into three kingdoms. But when they came there 
 were, we have no doubt, as many different tribes as the white 
 man found among the Indians of North America. A common 
 interest brought those together. The exigencies of the defence 
 placed in the foreground their ablest men. And in course of 
 time the Scots, whoever they were (some say they came from 
 Ireland, others from Scythia, others that they were merely one of 
 the aboriginal 'painted' clans), got finally the upper hand, and 
 gave their name to the whole country. 
 
 We do not stay to discuss the question, how Christianity was 
 first introduced into Scotland. It is a point which can never be 
 settled, and which really is not of very much consequence. There 
 are three things, however, which come out quite clearly in such 
 records as we have, viz. — (i) That the process of conversion was 
 (at least after a time) tribal rather than individual ; (2) That, as a 
 result, the religion of the country retained for long a large admixture 
 of practical paganism; and (3) That in the conduct of the missionary 
 enterprises of the time, certain individual men took conspicuous 
 and memorable parts. Now-a-days it docs not follow that when 
 any great man changes his creed his dependants change with 
 him. Each of us claims a right to judge for himself. But time 
 was when the clans did not presume to differ from their chiefs, 
 and then the conquest of one individual implied the almost certain 
 submission of a multitude. Such conversions, however, were 
 necessarily superficial, and there occur in the history from time 
 to time, plain enough indications that whole districts relapsed into 
 
THE CHURCH OF THE FIRST CENTURIES. 3 
 
 heathenism and needed to be reconverted. The outstanding 
 missionaries of these days were St. Rule (rather a shadowy figure), 
 St. Ninian, Bishop Palladius, St. Patrick, St. Serf, St. Mungo, 
 and St. Columba. What we read about them is as follows : — 
 
 i. St. Regulus. — St. Rule (or St. Regulus) was, they say, an 
 Eastern monk to whom was committed the charge of finding a 
 grave for the bones of St. Andrew. For this he searched in vain 
 along the shores of the Mediterranean, but happily found it on 
 the East Coast of Scotland. Landing at what is now (and hence) 
 called St. Andrews, he converted the Picts of the neighbourhood 
 to Christianity, and founded a church, of which the tower still 
 standing and bearing his name is the memorial. The date of St. 
 Rule's visit is 369. It is impossible to say how much of truth 
 there is in the legend, but that it has some foundation in fact, we 
 cannot doubt. Perhaps it is here that we are to seek for the 
 origin of the tradition, that the first to plant the Cross among us 
 were not Romans, but Oriental Christians. 
 
 2. St. Ninian. — When St. Rule was landing in the Bay of St. 
 Andrews, St. Ninian was but a boy of nine. He was a very pre- 
 cocious youth, however, and as he very early became convinced 
 that the Christians around him (he was of English parentage) did 
 not properly understand the Scriptures, he resolved to go to 
 Rome for more light. The story bears suspicious marks of 
 having been written at a date when ' going to Rome for light ' had 
 grown commoner than it could have been in the fourth century, 
 but we must take it as we find it. It goes on to tell that the 
 young inquirer remained for several years in the imperial city, 
 that having been instructed sufficiently he was ordained [by the 
 Pope] as a missionary bishop to his countrymen, that on his way 
 home he visited St. Martin of Tours, the father of Monachism in 
 Western Europe, and that having received from him some lessons 
 in ecclesiastical architecture, he proceeded at once, when he had 
 landed in Galloway, to erect a stone church, which from the 
 
4 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 whiteness of its walls came to be known as the Candida Casa, or 
 the White House. This was in 400, twenty-three years before the 
 Romans withdrew from Great Britain. From this date Whit- 
 horn became a centre of Christian influence, the conversion of 
 the Southern Picts being generally ascribed to the labours of St. 
 Ninian and his coadjutors. Tradition credits the saint with the 
 performance of many miracles. We need not recount them, but 
 we do not need Bede or any other chronicler to convince us that 
 he did a really wonderful work in his day, because he has left his 
 mark permanently on the country. No fewer than five-and- 
 twenty churches and chapels, scattered all over the land from the 
 Shetlands to the Mull of Galloway, are known to have borne his 
 name. 
 
 3. St. Palladius. — About thirty years after St. Ninian had built 
 his White House another ambassador arrived from Rome. This 
 was Palladius, who is described as having been sent in 430 by 
 Pope Celestinus to be the first Bishop of the Scots. His com- 
 mission is awkwardly worded. At least Episcopalians think so. 
 For it seems to imply, on the one hand, that the Scots were 
 already Christians, and, on the other, that they had organized 
 themselves into a church without a bishop. They get rid of the 
 difficulty by supposing that he was sent not to originate a Scottish 
 Episcopate, but to put the copestone on it, by becoming the 
 * Primus Episcopus,' — the first bishop in point of rank, — in plain 
 words, the Pri??iate. This is a far-fetched, not to say grotesque, 
 explanation. The truth is, that for many centuries there was no 
 such thing as Prelacy in the Scottish Church. Palladius either 
 came as a missionary to teach the Scots the way of truth more 
 perfectly (for by this time heresies — Pelagianism, for example — 
 had begun to spread), or he came as an emissary, to secure, on 
 the side of Rome as against Constantinople, the countenance of 
 the Caledonian Christians in the struggle which had commenced 
 for supremacy. If the latter was his object, he failed in it. If 
 the former, he met probably with some success, for tradition 
 
THE CHURCH OF THE FIRST CENTURIES. 5 
 
 describes him as settled at Fordoun, in the Mearns, where he 
 gathered around him a company of admiring disciples. And the 
 remembrance of him has been preserved in that neighbourhood 
 to this day. A well was named after him, and the anniversary of 
 his birth and death was observed. His name, indeed, has been 
 abbreviated, so that it is now hardly recognisable in the collo- 
 quialism into which it has passed, and the holy day of the saint 
 has been diverted from its original purpose. But there seems no 
 reason to doubt that ' Paldy's Well ' and ' Paldy's Fair ' com- 
 memorate the services of the great Roman missioner. 
 
 ■ 4. St. Patrick. — Contemporary with Palladius, although accident 
 made him an Irish saint, was St. Patrick. He was born on the 
 banks of the Clyde, his father being a deacon and his grand- 
 father a presbyter. The fact is interesting as showing that at 
 this date (the middle of the fifth century) there was no such thing 
 known as the celibacy of the clergy. St. Patrick in his youth 
 fell into bad hands, and was carried captive into Ireland. There 
 a great change came over him, which led to his devoting him- 
 self to the work of the ministry. In place, however, of returning 
 to the land of his birth, he began at once to preach in the Green 
 Isle, and hence it is that a Scottish Christian occupies the most 
 conspicuous place in the Irish calendar. It is not improbable 
 that the Scotland of his day felt also to some extent the influence 
 of a man whose eminence must have been unquestionable. The 
 two countries were near enough to know something about each 
 other's proceedings, and Scottish Christianity could not but 
 receive an impulse from sympathy with the labours of so great a 
 compatriot. 
 
 5. St. Serf. — Among the disciples of Palladius were two men, 
 traces of whose labours still remain. One of these was Ternan, 
 whose name lingers in the north in connection with Banchory ; 
 the other was Servanus, or, as he is more familiarly called, St. 
 Serf. St. Serf appears to have been the principal of a theological 
 
6 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 institution at Culross. It is indeed in connection with him that 
 we first meet in Scotland with that kind of agency with which the 
 story of Iona and of the Culdees has made us so familiar. There 
 were no parishes or parochial clergy in these days. Christianity 
 was propagated and kept alive by itinerant missionaries. And to 
 provide and maintain these there were formed centres after the 
 model of the ancient schools of the prophets. Unless there was 
 another Servanus of the same type, which seems hardly likely, 
 St. Serf transferred his college in course of time from Culross 
 to an island on Lochleven, which still bears his name. There 
 his light shone far and near, and continued to shine after his 
 death, for the Lochleven institution developed into a Culdee 
 establishment, which flourished till the twelfth century. 
 
 6. St. Kentigern. — While St. Serf was still at Culross, a skiff 
 was one day driven ashore there bearing a young and beautiful 
 lady. She was the daughter of a Pictish king, had been accused of 
 incontinency, and had in consequence been cast away to perish 
 on the sea. The princess was, however, more sinned against 
 than sinning. After a time she gave birth to a son, who became 
 famous in the Church under the name of St. Kentigern. The 
 infant was brought to the saint to receive his blessing, and he, 
 struck with its beauty, and having perhaps some premonitions of 
 its future eminence, took it into his arms and spoke to it endear- 
 ingly, calling it, in the language of the country, ' Mochohe ! 
 Mochohe ! ' that is, ' My darling ! My darling ! ' The affection 
 so early displayed continued. The boy attended the mission 
 school at Culross, and was much taken notice of by the principal, 
 who got into the habit of calling him not by his own long name 
 of Kentigern, but by the pet name of Munghu ! My dear one. 
 And so we come to be introduced to St. Mungo, who in course 
 of time was called to the ministry of Strathclyde, and who took 
 up his abode in what was then a small town in that district, but 
 which has since developed into the great city of Glasgow. St. 
 Mungo is said to have been born in the year 514, and to have 
 
THE CHURCH OF THE FIRST CENTURIES. 7 
 
 lived to a very great age. He wrought many miracles, like St. 
 Ninian, the greatest of which were certainly those which issued 
 in the diffusion of Christianity throughout a wide region in the 
 west of Scotland. 
 
 7. St. Columba. — Some six years after the boat containing the 
 Pictish princess had been cast ashore at Culross, there was 
 born in County Donegal, Ireland, one who was to repay the 
 Scotch for the loss of St. Patrick. This was Columba. Being 
 of royal blood, he was, though he became an ecclesiastic, not 
 able to keep clear of the political troubles of his time. His 
 own country became unsafe for him, and, accompanied by 
 twelve followers, he crossed the sea and settled down in the 
 island of Iona. There he founded a religious community, which 
 appears to have done more toward the diffusion of Christianity 
 throughout Scotland and the north of England than any other 
 agency of which history speaks. The institution was in a sense 
 a monastery, that is, a number of men lived together in it whose 
 sole link of connection was their common interest in religion. 
 But it differed widely from the Papal establishment of the same 
 name, inasmuch as the members were bound by no vows of 
 celibacy, and the main object they had in combining together 
 was not the carrying on of perpetual local services, but that of 
 spreading abroad the knowledge of the gospel wherever they 
 could find a field. It was, in short, a missionary institute 
 suited to the times, and it proved a well of life to the whole 
 country in an age when the territorial system of sustaining ordi- 
 nances was as yet unknown. Columba died in 597, leaving 
 behind him an extraordinary reputation. His biographer says : 
 1 His name has not only become illustrious throughout our own 
 Scotia and Britain, but has also reached Spain and Gaul, and 
 penetrated into Italy beyond the Alps, and even to the city of 
 Rome itself.' In any case, he has left his mark very distinctly 
 upon his own adopted country. There are at least fifty-three 
 places in Scotland where his work is commemorated in connec- 
 
8 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 tion with wells or churches that had been dedicated to him. 
 The ruins which are still visible at Iona are the remains of 
 buildings which Columba never saw, for the architecture of his 
 day was of a very much humbler description. But they speak 
 for the importance of the institutions which he founded, and 
 which were continued through many subsequent generations ; 
 and we may still say with Dr. Samuel Johnson, ' That man is 
 little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon 
 the plains of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer 
 amid the ruins of Iona.' 
 
 8. Other Missionaries. — As we look back into that time, other 
 figures, more or less shadowy, flit across our line of vision. 
 Some of these have left such provokingly distinct footprints on 
 the country, that we cannot doubt about their having been im- 
 portant personages in their day. But their personality has for 
 ever fled, and not even a legend remains to help us to a con- 
 jecture as to their history. Who can tell us, for example, any- 
 thing about the doings of St. Maelrubna ; and yet his name 
 haunts to this day some of the most beautiful spots in the 
 Scottish Highlands. He was an Irishman, like Columba, but 
 he came to Scotland when he was twenty-five, and settled at 
 Applecross. After a ministry of fifty-one years (as we are told), 
 during which he lived in the odour of sanctity, he died in his 
 chosen Ross-shire, and was buried on an island in Loch Maree. 
 We know little more of Baithean, Kenneth, or Donnan, 
 although memorials of all the three are to be found in the 
 topography of Scotland. All that seems clear is this, that here 
 and there, and from time to time, men of mark were raised up 
 to preserve and extend the light of Christianity, and that these 
 invariably acted on the one plan of having a common missionary 
 centre with a number of outlying stations. 
 
 9. The Culdees. — Dark, however, as this period is, it is light as 
 compared with that which follows. For five hundred years 
 
THE CHURCH OF THE FIRST CENTURIES. 9 
 
 from the seventh century to the twelfth — the annals of the Church 
 mysteriously disappear, and we can only guess at what happened 
 during this long interval by noticing what was the condition of 
 things before it began and when it ended. The era on which 
 the cloud rests is that of the Culdees. Dr. Hill Burton, who 
 is, one might say, almost contemptuously fair in his discussion 
 of ecclesiastical questions, shows a curious animus against these 
 remarkable communities. On the whole, he inclines to think 
 that ' Culdee ' was a nickname used in the days of Queen 
 Margaret to distinguish those who refused to assent to the 
 1 reforms ' which she instituted in the Church. But he scouts 
 the idea of their being the successors of the Columbites, and 
 holds that although they may have been ' bad Papists,' they were 
 certainly far enough from being ' Protestant evangelicals.' If 
 Dr. Burton had given conclusive reasons for his beliefs in this 
 connection, we should, of course, have felt obliged to give way 
 before so high an authority. But he does not reason ; he 
 simply asserts. And to us no reading of the times seems more 
 natural than that which assumes the continuance through the 
 five dark centuries of very much the same forms of religion as 
 prevailed beforehand at Whithorn, at Culross, at Iona, at Aber- 
 nethy, at Applecross, at Lochleven, at Dunkeld, and at St. 
 Andrews. That the Church of this time did not preserve all 
 the best features of the primitive period is admitted. Rich 
 endowments came to be bestowed upon some of the Culdee 
 establishments, and secular interests were bound up with them. 
 It is a suspicious circumstance, too, that as the centuries go 
 on, ' saints ' grow fewer, that is, there are fewer outstanding 
 men distinguished for their religious earnestness. But all the 
 information we have about the Scottish Church before the 
 cloud fell, during its continuance, and after it lifted, distinctly 
 countenances the impression that it was throughout one and the 
 same organization with that which we are made familiar with 
 in the history of Columba. 
 
 It is not. quite certain what the word ' Culdee ' means. Some 
 
10 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 trace it to a Latin origin, and suppose that the Culdees were 
 1 Cultores Dei' — worshippers of God. A more likely inter- 
 pretation is suggested by an account given of the disciples 
 of St. Kentigern. They are described as living apart and 
 piously in small dwellings of their own, and as being called 
 popularly Calledei, which, says Dr. M'Lauchlan, is just the 
 Celtic Cuiltich) or Men of the Recess. The first form of the 
 National Church was that of a congeries of mission centres with 
 dependencies. These were, to begin with, strictly spiritual and 
 evangelistic. But as the early fervour decayed, they tended to 
 degenerate, and it was probably easy enough to transform some 
 of them into Roman abbeys. What took place, however, in the 
 twelfth century, was obviously a conflict between the old order of 
 things and the new. Under the direction of St. Margaret and 
 her sons, strenuous efforts were made to bring the Scottish 
 Church into conformity with that of England and of Rome, and 
 the Culdees were, ecclesiastically, the patriotic and conserva- 
 tive party. It is possibly true, as has been affirmed, that the 
 'soundness' of the later Culdees has been exaggerated. We 
 can hardly think that they exactly corresponded to the modern 
 1 Protestant evangelicals.' At the same time, it is clearly no 
 fond fancy which pictures the primitive Church of Scotland as 
 maintaining for centuries a sturdy independence, and as 
 asserting opinions of its own in the face of all the threaten- 
 ings and cajolements which came from the Vatican. It 
 held its own, for example, in the controversies which arose 
 very early about the Tonsure and the keeping of Easter. It 
 refused to recognise the Roman supremacy, to which England 
 soon submitted. It accepted Diocesan Episcopacy only after 
 the immigration of the Saxons. And there are many things 
 which warrant the statement, that the Bible did not cease 
 very soon to be studied, or to be the supreme rule of 
 faith. 
 
 1. JVhat is known about the early state of Scotland ? 
 
 2. How 7vas the gosfcl first successfully propagated in it ? 
 
THE CHURCH OF THE FIRST CENTURIES. 1 1 
 
 3. Name the men who appear to have been concerned in the founding 
 
 of the Church. 
 
 4. What memorial is there of St. Rule ? 
 
 5. In what ways is St. Ninian still remembered ? 
 
 6. For what purpose is it said that Palladius came from Rome? 
 
 7. Where was St. Patrick born ? 
 
 8. How does he come to be the patron saint of Ireland ? 
 
 9. With what districts is St. Serf associated ? 
 
 10. Which of these early missionaries gave his name to Glasgow? 
 
 11. Relate his history. 
 
 12. Which is the most fatuous of them all? 
 
 13. Of what country was he a native? 
 
 14. Wherein did the establishment at lona differ from a Popish 
 
 monastery ? 
 
 15. Give the names of any other famous men in those days, 
 
 16. Who were the Culdees? 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 HOW SCOTLAND CAME TO BE ROMANIZED. 
 
 The Norman Conquest, which took place in 1066, did not 
 change the face of England alone. It told influentially on 
 Scotland also. It started a tide of emigration which continued 
 to flow northward for many a year after the battle of Hastings. 
 The Anglo-Saxons did not like their new masters, and such large 
 numbers of them crossed the border, that the very speech of 
 the Scottish Lowlands became affected by their presence. If 
 William the Bastard had not come over from Normandy in the 
 end of the eleventh century, and begun a new page in the history 
 of England, it is more than likely that the whole of the Scottish 
 people would to this day have been speaking Gaelic. 
 
 1. St. Margaret. — Among those who sought shelter in the north 
 
 were the dethroned royal family of England. The story goes 
 
 that Edgar, the young Saxon Pretender, landed with his mother 
 
 and his two sisters at a spot near Queensferry, which is still 
 
 called in memory of the incident St. Margaret's Hope. From 
 
 this spot the little party journeyed on foot toward Dunfermline, 
 
 where the Court then was — a pilgrimage of which there is also 
 
 a memorial in the shape of a wayside resting-place, called St. 
 
 Margaret's Stone. Malcolm Canmore was at that time king of 
 
 Scotland, and he received the fugitives with open arms, spending 
 
 afterwards no little blood and treasure in the endeavour to restore 
 
 to them their inheritance. That, however, does not at present 
 
 concern us. What we have to note as of more importance, is 
 
 that Malcolm fell in love with one of the young princesses, and 
 
 12 
 
HOW SCOTLAND CAME TO BE ROMANIZED. 1 3 
 
 persuaded her to become his Queen. That event was far-reach- 
 ing in its consequences. Margaret, although she was not formally 
 canonized for centuries after her death, was a more genuine 
 saint than most of those whose names fill the Roman Calendar. 
 Her religion had a sad admixture in it of the superstitions of the 
 time, and she did much mischief in her too successful efforts to 
 propagate it ; but there can be no question as to the depth of her 
 personal piety, or as to the sincerity of her desire to glorify God 
 according to her light. One conclusive proof of the force and 
 purity of her personal character is seen in the impression she 
 produced on her own household. Her rough husband was 
 devoted to her, and would frequently kiss her books, though he 
 could read none of them ; while of her three sons, all of whom 
 in succession ascended the throne, each seemed more anxious 
 than the other to carry out, in matters of religion, their mother's 
 wishes. 
 
 2. Her Reforms.— The state of things in the Scottish Church 
 did not please the Saxon princess who had become queen of 
 Scotland, and under her active superintendence there began that 
 process of assimilation to English ecclesiastical ways which in 
 the hands of her youngest son David issued in the establishment 
 of ' Catholic unity.' In some respects, indeed, she wrought a 
 real reformation. The law of marriage had been so relaxed 
 that unions were taking place within prohibited degrees, and she 
 insisted on its being restored to its integrity. Sabbath-breaking 
 also had become common, and she succeeded in persuading 
 the Scots that they ought not to continue the ordinary work of 
 the week on the Lord's Day. And it may certainly be added, 
 that by the force of her own example and the stir she made about 
 religious matters generally, she elevated the character of the 
 Court, and diffused a new spirit of earnestness throughout the 
 country. But though the ancient Church unquestionably needed 
 a revival, it is more than doubtful whether she set the breeze 
 blowing in the right direction. Her controversies with the 
 
14 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 clergy, which were frequent, were not always about points of 
 supreme importance. The subject of one, for example, was as to 
 the day on which Lent should begin. But the whole drift of her 
 policy was to break down the distinctions which she found exist- 
 ing, and bring about conformity to the Roman standard, and her 
 sons would perhaps not have succeeded so well in their open 
 efforts if the way had not so far been cleared for them by their 
 saintly mother. She died in 1093. 
 
 3. Her Three Sons. — Of the three sons of Margaret, David is the 
 one to whom Rome is most indebted. Edgar's reign was short 
 and, except in its stormy morning, uneventful. Alexander inherited 
 the fierce spirit of his father, and was overbearing to ordinary 
 men, but he would do anything for the clergy ; and it was in his 
 day that the process began of enriching the Church at the ex- 
 pense of the Crown. David, however, was his mother's son — 
 gentle, pious, superstitious, freehanded, with an entire devotion to 
 the cause which he believed to be that of God. It is interesting 
 to remember that he died in the attitude of prayer. 
 
 It was unfortunate for Scotland that in his earlier days David 
 was led to spend so much of his time in English circles. He 
 married a daughter of the Earl of Northumberland, and through 
 her came into possession of the barony of Huntingdon. This 
 made him an English noble, and in that character he attended 
 the English Court, and made the acquaintance of those Norman 
 gentlemen of whom so many afterwards found their way to the 
 palace of Dunfermline. When his brother died he returned 
 to his native country to receive the crown, but he returned 
 Anglicized and Romanized, with the same determination which 
 in later years possessed Charles II. to mould the Church of 
 Scotland after the glittering model which he had seen on the 
 other side of the Border. 
 
 Unhappily the Culdee Church was not made of the stuff which 
 afterwards appeared in the Covenanters. It had become spiritu- 
 ally dead, and palpable abuses of various kinds existed in it. 
 
HOW SCOTLAND CAME TO BE ROMANIZED. 1 5 
 
 Many of its institutions, for example, had been made rich by the 
 pious liberality of its members, but in not a few instances the 
 endowments had been appropriated by the children of churchmen 
 for their own use — only a fraction being devoted to strictly ecclesi- 
 astical purposes. There did remain, probably, something of the 
 primitive faith and practice. The celibacy of the clergy, for one 
 thing, was not insisted on. But there had ceased to be any pith 
 or enthusiasm in the system, and the King was allowed to have 
 his own way, with scarcely any opposition. 
 
 4. The Sair Saint. — What David did was simply to reproduce 
 in Scotland the identical Church system which he had found in 
 England. ' He wrought a change in ecclesiastical affairs, ' says 
 Dr. Cunningham, 'almost as great as that which was subse- 
 quently accomplished by Knox. He in effect built up that which 
 Knox, when it was in a state of decay, pulled down. He drove 
 out the now antiquated Culdees, and introduced prelates and 
 priests : Knox cast out the prelates and priests, and brought in 
 Protestant preachers. The proceedings of the one as well as of 
 the other are frequently spoken of as a Church reform. It is 
 certain that David remodelled our whole ecclesiastical polity. 
 He originated the hierarchy, and gave it its splendour. Nearly 
 the half of our bishoprics, and the abbeys of Kelso, Holy rood, 
 Melrose, Newbattle, Cambuskenneth, Kinloss, Dryburgh, and 
 Jedburgh, were founded by his munificence. He brought several 
 orders both of the Augustinian and Benedictine monks into our 
 country, transplanting them from their great monasteries of 
 France and England ; and it was under his favour that the 
 Templars and Knights of St. John took up their residence at 
 Southesk and Torphichen.' 
 
 A king who could accomplish all this in one generation must 
 have been no ordinary man ; and if, as has been suggested, these 
 ecclesiastical changes were only parts of a great scheme of State 
 reform, — if David's hope was to refine and elevate the tastes of 
 his nobles and the character of his country through the Church, 
 
1 6 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 — we must concede to him a very high place indeed among the 
 wide-thinking statesmen of the world. The plan could not 
 possibly be a perfect success because of the imperfection of the 
 instrument he had to use. But it was a grand conception, and 
 full justice perhaps has not been done to him for entertaining it. 
 Men from all lands are still visiting the wonderful abbeys of 
 Dryburgh and Melrose. These creations of architectural genius 
 continue to contribute to the education of the nineteenth century. 
 And although our Scottish Solomon, King James, shook his head 
 over the extravagance, and in the midst of his own impecuniosity 
 ruefully complained that his pious predecessor had been ' a sair 
 saunct to the Croon,' it would be gross ingratitude on the part of 
 those of us who have not suffered through David's munificence, 
 to withhold from him so far the tribute of our admiration. 
 
 5. The Church in the Dark Age. — It is not necessary to linger 
 over the history of the Papal Church in Scotland. With its 
 general features everybody is acquainted. Romanism here de- 
 veloped itself in very much the same way as it has done else- 
 where, and if any one wants to realize the condition of Scotland 
 in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, he has but to 
 look at Spain in the present day. 
 
 But there are two things which may be referred to in passing 
 as having a bearing on the after attitude of Scotland in ecclesi- 
 astical matters. I call them two things, but in reality they may 
 be traced up to one and the same source. Very soon after the 
 establishment of the hierarchy in Scotland, claims were put 
 forward on behalf of the English Church to exercise spiritual 
 authority over its Scottish sister. This raised the question of the 
 autonomy and independence of the Scottish Church, and in con- 
 nection with the battles that were fought about it, the country 
 was twice placed under the ban of Papal excommunication. The 
 curse seems to have been submitted to with considerable equa- 
 nimity. But a sorer trouble came when Edward I. attempted 
 to destroy the political independence of North Britain, and bring 
 
HOW SCOTLAND CAME TO BE ROMANIZED. I 7 
 
 the whole island under his heel. How much there is of the 
 legendary in the story of Sir William Wallace it would be diffi- 
 cult to tell, but there seems no reason to doubt that if it had not 
 been for the gallant stand made by him, Scotland would have 
 settled down, like Ireland, into the position of a conquered 
 province, with the spirit of the people chafed or broken, and its 
 whole subsequent history complexioned and directed by influences 
 from abroad. The peaceful union of the Crowns, which was 
 brought about in course of time, has on the whole issued in 
 satisfactory results to both countries ; but in various periods we 
 have been forced to remember that England is the larger and 
 more influential half of the Empire, and our struggles for political 
 and ecclesiastical independence have not been without their good 
 effects in preserving for us some of the healthiest of our national 
 characteristics. 
 
 1. What effect had the Norman Conquest on Scotland? 
 
 2. To what one important event did it lead? 
 
 3. What was the character of Queen Margaret ? 
 
 4. What good and evil did she do in the Scottish Church ? 
 
 5. Which of her three sons most resembled her? 
 
 6. Where did he receive much of his training? 
 
 7. What was the consequence ? 
 
 8. Has he, in any other ways, left his mark upon the country ? 
 
 9. Describe his character. 
 
 10. Into what condition was the Church subsequently brought ? 
 
 11. What encroachments were attempted on Scottish independence in 
 
 Church and State ? 
 
 12. To whom, among others, are we indebted for fighting our battles 
 
 and preserving us from the fate of Ireland? 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 WHAT LED TO A REVOLT. 
 
 For two hundred and fifty years after the death of David — that 
 is, from 1153 to the beginning of the fifteenth century — the 
 Church of Rome had in Scotland unchallenged possession of the 
 field. From the latter date, however, breezes began to blow from 
 several quarters threatening its prolonged supremacy. One of 
 these breezes sprang out of the very grossness of the Church's 
 corruptions, producing as it did in the popular mind a deepening 
 feeling of indignation and disgust. A second came from what 
 was a notable feature of the time, the spread throughout Europe 
 of a higher general intelligence. And a third was caused by the 
 opening up to the people of the contents of the Bible. 
 
 1. The Need of Reformation.— That the Scottish Church of the 
 fifteenth and sixteenth centuries needed some kind of reforma- 
 tion is frankly admitted by Papists themselves. It is not merely 
 true that there then existed an ecclesiastical establishment, 
 teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. What 
 history tells us is this, that an institution which was intended 
 for the promotion of godliness was altogether diverted from its 
 purpose, and made to subserve instead the worst ends of worldly 
 men. 
 
 The picture which Dr. M'Crie gives of the period is a very 
 
 frightful one, but the trustworthiness of the biographer of Knox as 
 
 a historian is well established, and we cannot therefore do better 
 
 than quote what he says upon the subject. 
 
 ' The corruptions,' he remarks, ' by which the Christian religion 
 
 18 
 
WHAT LED TO A REVOLT. J 9 
 
 was universally depraved before the Reformation had grown to a 
 greater height in Scotland than in any other nation within the 
 pale of the Western Church. Superstition and religious im- 
 posture, in their grossest forms, gained an easy admission among 
 a rude and ignorant people. By means of these the clergy 
 attained to an exorbitant degree of opulence and power, which 
 were accompanied, as they always have been, with the corrup- 
 tion of their order, and of the whole system of religion. The 
 full half of the wealth of the nation belonged to the clergy, and 
 the greater part of this was in the hands of a few individuals, who 
 had the command of the whole body. Avarice, ambition, and 
 the love of secular pomp reigned among the superior orders. 
 Bishops and abbots rivalled the first nobility in magnificence, 
 and preceded them in honours ; they were privy councillors and 
 lords of session, as well as of Parliament, and had long engrossed 
 the principal offices of State. A vacant bishopric or abbacy 
 called forth powerful competitors, who contended for it as for a 
 principality or petty kingdom ; it was obtained by similar arts, 
 and not unfrequently taken possession of by the same weapons. 
 Inferior benefices were openly put to sale, or bestowed on the 
 illiterate and unworthy minions of courtiers or dice-players, 
 strolling bards, and the bastards of bishops. . . . The lives 
 of the clergy, exempted from secular jurisdiction, and corrupted 
 by wealth and idleness, were become a scandal to religion and 
 an outrage on decency. While they professed chastity, and pro- 
 hibited, under the severest penalties, any of the ecclesiastical 
 orders from contracting lawful wedlock, the bishops set an 
 example of the most shameless profligacy before the inferior 
 clergy. . . . Through the blind devotion and munificence of 
 prince and nobles, monasteries, those nurseries of superstition 
 and idleness, had greatly multiplied in the nation, and though 
 they had universally degenerated, and were notoriously become 
 the haunts of lewdness and debauchery, it was deemed impious 
 and sacrilegious to reduce their number, abridge their privileges, 
 or alienate their funds. The kingdom swarmed with ignorant, 
 
20 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 idle, luxurious monks, who, like locusts, devoured the fruits of 
 the earth, and filled the air with pestilential infections. . . . The 
 ignorance of the clergy respecting religion was as gross as the 
 dissoluteness of their morals. Even bishops were not ashamed 
 to confess that they were unacquainted with the canon of their 
 own faith, and had never read any part of the Sacred Scriptures, 
 except what they met with in their missals. Under such pastors 
 the people perished for lack of knowledge. That Book which 
 was able to make them wise unto salvation, and intended to be 
 equally accessible to Jew and Greek, barbarian and Scythian, 
 bond and free, was locked up from them, and the use of it in 
 their own tongue prohibited under the heaviest penalties. The 
 religious service was mumbled over in a dead language, which 
 many of the priests did not understand, and some of them 
 could scarcely read ; and the greatest care was taken to prevent 
 even catechisms, composed and approved by the clergy, from 
 coming into the hands of the laity. ... Of the doctrine of 
 Christianity almost nothing remained but the name. ... It is 
 difficult for us to conceive how empty, ridiculous, and wretched 
 those harangues were which the priests delivered for sermons.' 
 
 Dr. M'Crie adds : ' The beds of the dying were besieged, and 
 their last moments disturbed by avaricious priests, who laboured 
 to extort bequests to themselves or to the Church. Not satisfied 
 with exacting tithes from the living, a demand was made upon 
 the dead. No sooner had a poor husbandman breathed his last 
 than the rapacious vicar came and carried off his corpse-present, 
 which he repeated as often as death visited the family. Ecclesi- 
 astical censures were fulminated against those who were re- 
 luctant in making these payments, or who showed themselves 
 disobedient to the clergy ; and for a little money they were 
 prostituted on the most trifling occasions. Divine service was 
 neglected ; the churches were deserted (especially after the light 
 of the Reformation had discovered abuses, and pointed out a 
 more excellent way), so that except on a few festival days the 
 places of worship in many parts of the country served only as 
 
WHAT LED TO A REVOLT. 2 I 
 
 sanctuaries for malefactors, places of traffic, and resorts of 
 pastime.' 
 
 We may safely allow ourselves to believe that all the priests 
 were not like those described above, and that even in the darkest 
 days there were some parishes in which a certain amount of light 
 was suffered to shine. But if, on the whole, things were at all as 
 M'Crie paints them, we can scarcely wonder that there should 
 have come a revolt. The story goes that a precentor, who was 
 discreet enough to hold his tongue while awake, once betrayed 
 the state of his feelings when dreaming. Unfortunately for him- 
 self he had a habit of talking in his sleep, and he narrowly 
 escaped having the honours of martyrdom thrust upon him, 
 through his one night emphatically denouncing the priests as ' a 
 greedy pack.' A good many are known to have been of the 
 opinion of this honest precentor. The grumbling went on in 
 private long before it found articulate expression, and the Church 
 no more occupied the place it had done in earlier days, when 
 the escapades of the monks became the subjects of bitter jests 
 among the people, and the manners of the clergy were lam- 
 pooned in satirical verses by the wits of the Court. 
 
 2. The Intellectual Awakening. — What helped to deepen the 
 dissatisfaction with which the corruptions of the Church were 
 viewed, was the intellectual awakening which took place con- 
 currently over the whole of Europe. Toward this, some of the 
 Scottish clergy themselves directly contributed. Among these 
 was Henry Wardlaw, Bishop of St. Andrews, to whose exertions 
 that ancient city is indebted for the establishment of its Univer- 
 sity in 141 3. In 1450, the University of Glasgow was instituted, 
 also through the intervention of the bishop of the diocese. Pre- 
 viously to these dates, there were youths who gave themselves to 
 study, and for them some provision existed in the monasteries. 
 But if any one wanted to excel, there was nothing for it but to 
 seek some seat of learning abroad, and few comparatively could 
 afford the means to do that. A great step was taken then 
 
2 2 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 when home colleges were provided. One result must have been 
 a marked increase in the number of educated men ; and the 
 Church thus unwittingly let light in upon the repellent spec- 
 tacle of its own abuses. But it was not only the cultured 
 classes, as we now call them, who felt the impulses of the new 
 era. The very same year which saw the founding of Glasgow 
 University saw also the invention of printing. Four-and-twenty 
 years later, Caxton was at his press in England. And although 
 it was not till 1508 that the first book was printed in Scotland, 
 yet here, as elsewhere, the influence of the revival of letters was 
 by and by experienced, and the nation rendered less and less 
 disposed to tolerate the extravagances at which, in its ignorance, 
 it had winked. 
 
 3. Translation of the Bible. — The Reformation, however, would 
 never have taken place if it had not been for yet another cause. 
 This was the diffusion of a knowledge of what is contained in 
 the Bible. Wickliff died in 1384, so that before then the whole 
 of the Scriptures had been translated into English. Of the 
 translation thus made, many manuscript copies are said to be 
 still extant, and we may therefore assume that the Book was 
 very widely circulated in the age in which it appeared. The 
 effects produced by the perusal of it were most marked. God 
 blessed it to the conversion of not a few individual souls, and to 
 the religious awakening of many communities. 
 
 Among those who were deeply stirred by it were some among 
 the clergy. These ' poor priests/ as they came to be called, 
 could not remain silent after they had received a divine message 
 to deliver, and they began to preach, rivalling, as was said at 
 the time, the mendicant friars in their zeal, or, as we might 
 perhaps say now, acting as missionary evangelists. One such 
 preacher, John Reseby by name, wandered across the border 
 telling the Scottish people about the new gospel which he had 
 learnt directly from the Word. But he had passed into a region 
 where the darkness was as yet too dense to receive the light ; 
 
WHAT LED TO A REVOLT. 23 
 
 and the venturesome Wicklimte was (in 1408) arrested and 
 burnt. 
 
 The same fate overtook, twenty years later (in 1432), another 
 evangelist from a more distant country. Wickliffism had spread 
 over the Continent, and the truth which it contained had touched 
 the hearts of two men in Bohemia — John Huss and Jerome of 
 Prague. The Council of Constance, which met in 1414, did its 
 best to suppress ' the plague ' by committing its most prominent 
 propagators to the flames. But this method of stamping out the 
 gospel has never been found to be perfectly successful. Perse- 
 cution, for one thing, usually scatters the fire ; and in this fact 
 probably we are to seek the explanation of how a Bohemian 
 physician — Paul Craw by name— came over to Scotland and 
 settled in St. Andrews. The foreign doctor meant perhaps to 
 confine himself to his profession, but his heart burned within him, 
 and he could not be silent. Very soon, therefore, the town began 
 to ring with his teaching. He denied transubstantiation and pur- 
 gatory and the efficacy of absolution, and insisted that the people 
 ought to have the Bible in their own tongue. We can well 
 imagine how monstrous this doctrine must have sounded in the 
 ears of the bishop and his clergy. The Bohemian was seized, 
 and put out of the way at the stake. 
 
 Our attention is called to the cases of Reseby and Craw, 
 because the men were foreigners and were martyred. But 
 there were other currents flowing through the country whose 
 course was without observation ; and not a few things occurred 
 during the century to show that long before Knox appeared, 
 the views which he preached had begun to be promulgated in 
 Scotland. 
 
 4. The Lollards.— Who the Lollards were, for example, is not 
 quite clear — some tracing them to a German, others to an 
 English (and Wickliffite) source. But in any case this is cer- 
 tain, that a sect bearing that name, and holding many of the 
 distinctive articles of the Protestant faith, did prevail (especially 
 
24 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 in the west of Scotland) from the beginning of the fifteenth 
 century, and that their success was great enough to cause the 
 most serious alarm. The Scottish Parliament of 1425-26 
 directed the bishops to make diligent search after them, and, 
 what is still more suggestive, every graduate in the University 
 of St. Andrews was required to swear that he would do his 
 best to guard the Church against their machinations. If the 
 leaven had not been very formidable, these precautions should 
 have been sufficient to extinguish it. But the efforts at sup- 
 pression seem to have proved abortive ; for toward the very 
 close of the century — in 1494 — the aid of the King's Great 
 Council itself was solicited by the Church authorities. The 
 infection had spread, it appeared, to the higher classes. A 
 considerable company of lairds and ladies — chiefly from Kyle 
 and Cunningham — were charged by Bishop Blackadder of 
 Glasgow with holding such * heresies ' as these, that images 
 and relics ought not to be worshipped ; that after the consecra- 
 tion of the Mass there remains bread ; that every faithful man 
 and woman is a priest ; that the Pope is not the successor of 
 Peter ; that priests may have wives ; that the Pope forgives 
 not sin, but God ; that we should not pray to the Virgin Mary ; 
 and that we are not bound to believe all that the doctors of the 
 Kirk have written. The preaching of such doctrines must have 
 been intolerable to the hierarchy. And yet — the circumstance 
 is significant — the prosecution came to nothing. Whether the 
 rank of the parties protected them, or whether the King was 
 averse to the use of severe measures, or whether, as is hinted, 
 the wit of one of the defenders turned the whole thing into 
 ridicule, the trial collapsed, and the Lollards (for so they are 
 expressly called) returned to their homes triumphant. 
 
 It is important to note such incidents as these, because they 
 help to explain the subsequent course of events. The corruptions 
 and abuses of the Church might in time have provoked an 
 insurrection, and the likelihood of that happening was made the 
 greater by the spread of intelligence. But Popery would not 
 
WHAT LED TO A REVOLT. 2$ 
 
 have given place to Protestantism if the people had not come 
 to be acquainted with what the Bible teaches about God and 
 His worship. Through the circulation of the Scriptures, and 
 the distinct blessing which accompanied it, a religious revival 
 took place. Many were led to see not merely the errors of the 
 Church of Rome, but the saving truth that is in Jesus Christ, 
 and through their zeal in diffusing a knowledge of the gospel, 
 the mass of the people were not altogether unprepared to 
 appreciate and welcome the great revolution of the Reformation. 
 
 1. How long did the Church oj Rome rule over Scotland? 
 
 2. What was the first thing which excited the desire for reforma- 
 
 tion ? 
 
 3. Name some of the most intolerable corruptions. 
 
 4. What helped to increase the dissatisfaction ? 
 
 5. By whose translation of the Bible was the movement helped? 
 
 6. Give the names of two early Scottish martyrs, 
 
 7. Who were the Lollards ? 
 
 8. What were their tenets ? 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 In the autumn of 1525, public and unmistakable notification was 
 made of the fact that ' the Reformation ' had reached the shores 
 of Scotland. An Act of Parliament was then passed, in which 
 it was ordained that ' forasmuch as damnable heresies are being 
 spread in divers countries by the heretic Luther and his disciples, 
 and this realm and lieges have firmly persisted in the holy faith 
 since the same was first received by them, and never as yet ad- 
 mitted any opinions contrary to the Christian faith, but ever have 
 been clean of all such filth and vice : therefore, that no manner 
 of person — stranger — that happens to arrive with the ship within 
 any part of this realm, bring with them any books or works of the 
 said Luther's, his disciples or servants, dispute or rehearse his 
 heresies or opinions unless it be to the confusion thereof, under 
 the pain of escheating of their ship and goods, and putting of 
 their person in prison.' 
 
 This Act was published in all the ports and burghs of the 
 realm in July, and only a month later a note had to be issued by 
 the King in Council calling the attention of the Sheriff of Aberdeen 
 to the ascertained fact that the interdict had been broken, and 
 that some of Luther's books were in actual circulation within his 
 jurisdiction. The plague had indeed arrived. 
 
 It was in 1517 that Luther nailed his theses to the church door 
 of Wittenberg, and the challenge thus given by him awoke echoes 
 in every university and church circle of Europe. Outside his 
 own country he was generally denounced as a heresiarch, but his 
 pamphlets were eagerly bought and read nevertheless, and much 
 
 20 
 
THE REFORMATION. 27 
 
 mischief had been done before the priests of the old faith realized 
 what was happening. Luther's books, however, did not consti- 
 tute the only literature which was smuggled about this time into 
 Scotland. A considerable trade was carried on between our 
 East Coast towns and the Low Counties, and our skippers from 
 Leith and elsewhere found it profitable to bring over as part of 
 their cargoes parcels of Tyndale's Bible, which in those days was 
 printed at Cologne. 
 
 A movement like this could not, under any circumstances, have 
 been met as was that of the previous century. The printing press 
 is a more formidable adversary to fight than the copyist's pen, 
 and with a wide and exposed coast, it would not have been 
 possible for the Church to bar the incoming of pestilential publi- 
 cations from the Continent. If, therefore, the same blessing had 
 attended the circulation of Tyndale's Bible as undoubtedly went 
 with WicklifFs, the number of individuals influenced would have 
 been far greater, and the dissatisfied and protesting element 
 dangerously increased. But with all that, the movement would 
 not so soon have attained to national dimensions, or resulted so 
 rapidly in the overthrow of the established ecclesiastical institu- 
 tions, if it had not been for several things in connection with 
 which we cannot but recognise the marks of Divine interposition. 
 
 1. The Leaders. — One notably providential circumstance was 
 the raising up of a succession of remarkable men as the leaders of 
 the movement. The success of all movements depends more 
 upon this than upon anything else. Numbers may become a 
 rabble if they have no head ; and a very few may become mighty 
 if they have a man of genius to guide them. It is happily no 
 longer a sign of narrowness to think highly of Knox and the 
 Regent Murray. Such writers as Froude and Carlyle agree in 
 asserting that no greater Scotchmen ever lived, and we shall 
 therefore be held to say nothing out of the way when we claim for 
 a cause which enlisted them a prima facie importance, and point 
 to their leadership as having contributed providentially to its 
 
28 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 triumph. Knox and Murray, however, were not the only out- 
 standing men of that age. Among the laity were not a few who 
 possessed statesman-like gifts, and among the preachers were 
 men who would have been distinguished in any time. 
 
 2. John Knox.— Of this class three men stand out with the 
 greatest prominence : Patrick Hamilton, the proto-martyr of the 
 Reformation ; George Wishart, its first evangelist ; and John 
 Knox, the earliest of that grand series of Church statesmen of 
 whom the Church of Scotland has such good reason to be proud. 
 We can make room only for a short outline sketch of the life of 
 the last of the three. 
 
 Knox was born in 1505 at Haddington, and was educated at 
 the Grammar School there and at the University of St. Andrews. 
 About 1530 he was ordained to the Roman Catholic priesthood, 
 but he seems to have occupied himself more with academic than 
 with ecclesiastical pursuits. It was while studying the works of 
 Augustine that he began first to doubt about the religion in which 
 he had been brought up, and took to reading the Scriptures in 
 the original ; and it was while he was nominally teaching philo- 
 sophy that he first betrayed to his students the drift of his mind. 
 He did not, however, openly avow himself a Protestant till 1542, 
 when he was taken into the family of Douglas of Longniddry as 
 a tutor to his boys. In this post he remained for several years, 
 devoting a considerable portion of his time to the instruction of 
 the neighbourhood in the truths of the gospel. When Wishart 
 came to Haddington in January 1546, Knox attached himself 
 to his person, and became the bearer of the sword which it 
 had been the custom to carry before the martyr ever since his 
 life was attempted in Dundee. Such an open identification 
 of himself with the cause of Wishart made Knox of course a 
 notorious man. He had good reason to fear that he might be 
 the next victim selected for the sacrifice ; and to save himself 
 he shortly after took a step which resulted in momentous con- 
 sequences. The castle of St. Andrews remained for sixteen, 
 
THE REFORMATION. 29 
 
 months in the hands of the men who had slain Cardinal Beaton, 
 and during that time it was resorted to as an asylum by many 
 who desired toleration for their religion. Knox followed the 
 example of such, and with his pupils was admitted within its 
 gates at the end of the year. Here, by what we may call a 
 stratagem, he was induced to enter on the public exercise of the 
 Christian ministry, and such power accompanied his sermons 
 and disputations during his seven months of residence in the 
 place, that a great number of the inhabitants renounced Popery 
 and made profession of the Protestant faith by partaking together 
 of the Lord's Supper. The circumstance is memorable on this 
 account, that then for the first time the sacrament was dispensed 
 in Scotland in the scriptural way. There was, however, to be a 
 sad ending of all this. A French fleet arrived to invest the 
 castle, and at the end of July 1547 the garrison capitulated. 
 Knox, with others, was carried a prisoner to France, and for 
 twenty long months he laboured at the oar of a French galley. 
 
 How he came to be released is unknown, but when he gained 
 his freedom he immediately proceeded to England. There he 
 was received with great cordiality by King Edward VI., and 
 was provided through him with a sphere of usefulness. For five 
 years he laboured in connection with the Church of England, 
 and might have attained to high place in it if he could have 
 persuaded himself that it was in all respects rightly constituted. 
 But he disapproved of its discipline and its episcopal govern- 
 ment, and although he accepted the office of King's chaplain, he 
 refused at once a parochial charge and a bishopric. When 
 Bloody Mary ascended the throne his life was once more put in 
 peril, and he fled for security to the Continent. There, in 
 Geneva, he made the acquaintance of Calvin, by whose per- 
 suasion he was induced to accept the oversight of an English 
 congregation in Frankfort. But he had little encouragement to 
 remain there, and he left it after a short and troubled ministry. 
 In the autumn of 1555 he paid a visit to Scotland, and contributed 
 greatly, by his counsels and preaching, to rally the drooping 
 
30 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 cause of the Reformation ; but while at home he received a call 
 from Geneva to become the pastor of the English congregation 
 in that city, and he saw it to be his duty to return to 
 Switzerland. 
 
 The three years that followed were the quietest and perhaps 
 the happiest of his life. He was greatly esteemed in Geneva, so 
 much so, that when he left it the freedom of the city was con- 
 ferred upon him. He was in constant communication with 
 Calvin and others of the leading continental divines. And to 
 crown all, he had an attractive domestic circle, wife and mother- 
 in-law and children making for him a peaceful home. But all 
 the while his heart was in Scotland, and in the cause for which 
 he had already done so much; and when, at last, an earnest 
 invitation was given to him by a number of influential men, 
 pressing for his return, he had no difficulty in seeing his way to 
 accept. He sailed from Dieppe on the 22d of April, and landed 
 at Leith on the 2d of May 1559. He was now fifty-four years of 
 age, not very robust in body, but with a latent energy which was 
 at last to be fully called forth, and the entire remainder of his life 
 and strength was given to his country. 
 
 It may truly be said, when Knox at this time passed up Leith 
 Walk to Edinburgh, the hour had come and the man. The tide 
 of the Reformation had had its ebbs and flows, but now the 
 critical moment was approaching when it was to be definitely 
 settled, at least for a generation, on which side the nation, as 
 such, was to be. While Knox's eloquence and sagacity — his 
 force of character and fearlessness — would have made him an 
 acceptable recruit at any stage of the conflict, he was specially 
 welcome now, when the final struggle was to take place. 
 
 3. The Crisis. — The state of things was this: Protestant doctrine 
 had been widely diffused among the people, and the popular 
 faith in the old system had been thoroughly undermined. The 
 Reformation cause also had its competent leaders, who were able 
 to hold their own, both socially and intellectually, against all 
 
THE REFORMATION. 3 1 
 
 comers. But then on the other side there was the Queen Regent, 
 — Mary of Guise, — with all the power of France at her back, and 
 associated with her were many of the nobility and all the priest- 
 hood. If the Queen had been wise, she would have continued, 
 as she had been doing for a time, to tolerate and temporize. 
 But she had made up her mind that the movement must by all 
 means be arrested, and the result was a civil war, which had the 
 immediate effect of forcing the Protestants to organize themselves 
 into a distinct party. This party, with the help of England, and 
 under the inspiration of such men as Knox and Lord James 
 Stuart, grew increasingly formidable. One town after another 
 threw off the Papal yoke and established Protestant worship. 
 More and more it became apparent that the cause of Rome was 
 a lost cause; and so it came to pass that the Scottish Parlia- 
 ment, which met in August 1560, was able, with an extraordinary 
 amount of unanimity, to adopt a Confession framed on substan- 
 tially the same lines as that of Westminster; to abolish the Papal 
 jurisdiction; to forbid, under certain penalties, the celebration of 
 the Mass ; and to rescind all the laws formerly made in favour of 
 the Roman Catholic religion, and against the Reformation. 
 
 4. Protestantism Established. — It is rather a memorable circum- 
 stance, that this Parliament did not proceed to endow the new 
 Church of the nation. That was an after work. Establishment, 
 or the national recognition of a particular faith, was not at once 
 seen to be the same thing as the direct support of it out of the 
 material resources of the kingdom. 
 
 Much, however, had to be done after Parliament had publicly 
 sided with the Reformation. A new ecclesiastical system had to 
 be organized, and for that end a Book of Discipline was pre- 
 pared. This was done at the request of the Privy Council by a 
 committee of ministers; but, of course, the controlling mind of the 
 committee was that of Knox, and the book is usually associated 
 with his name. It is a remarkable composition, and shows how 
 advantageous to the Reformer had been his diversified experiences 
 
32 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 and education. Row says, Its principles were taken not from 
 the teaching of any other Church, not even from Geneva, but 
 direct from the Scriptures ; and we may admit this to be true. 
 But it had not been for nothing that Knox had held intimate 
 intercourse with the greatest English and continental thinkers of 
 his day, and had had so much leisure for reflection afterwards in 
 his quiet retreat at Geneva. Its discipline, technically so called, 
 is severe, so much so, that the council hesitated to put its official 
 imprimatur on the book ; but altogether it is a wide-minded, 
 catholic-spirited production, such as was hardly to have been 
 expected in the age to which it belongs. 
 
 A reformed ministry was to be established in room of the 
 priesthood, and for this there was not, to begin with, an adequate 
 supply of men. A smaller man, who was afraid of being charged 
 with inconsistency, would have hesitated to move in these circum- 
 stances. He would probably have been content to wait until the 
 supply had increased. But Knox was too great and too practical 
 an administrator to sacrifice vital interests to technicalities. The 
 country required to be evangelized. That was the problem 
 pressing for solution. And without caring, apparently, whether 
 he was misjudged or not, he recommended the setting up of a 
 temporary order of officials, who had pri?na facie a suspicious 
 resemblance to bishops. These he proposed to call superi?ite?i- 
 dcmts. The land was divided into ten or twelve districts, and 
 over each of these a superintendent was placed to see to the 
 planting of kirks and to the securing of a ministry for them. 
 There are some, of course, who have seen in this arrangement 
 a testimony to Prelacy, but what is most visible in it is clearly 
 the inspiration of common sense. The system is expressly 
 described as a temporary expedient ; and that Prelacy was not 
 intended to be set up is plain from this, that one of the first 
 superintendents was the good old baron, Erskine of Dun. 
 
 Associated with the superintendents were pastors and doctors, 
 whose special work is indicated by their names, and elders and 
 deacons, with whose functions we are familiar. 
 
THE REFORMATION. 33 ^ 
 
 Nor did the book concern itself only with ecclesiastical matters, 
 strictly so called. It entered largely into the subject of school 
 and university education, and developed at once that scheme to 
 which Scotland owes so much. ' Of necessity we judge it,' say 
 the compilers, 'that every several kirk have one schoolmaster 
 appointed ; such a one, at least, as is able to teach grammar and 
 the Latin tongue.' Then in towns of any consequence ' colleges ' 
 or grammar schools are recommended to be instituted for 
 instruction in the higher branches. And finally, increased support 
 is urged to be given to the three then existing Universities of 
 St. Andrews, Glasgow, and Aberdeen. 
 
 But all this required money, and for that the patrimony of the 
 Church was naturally looked to. But here, in this connection, 
 broke out one of the 'saddest scandals' of the period. Already 
 some of the landlords had laid hold on ecclesiastical property, and 
 were appropriating it to their own use. ' With the grief of our 
 hearts,' say the authors of the Book of Discipline, 'we hear that 
 some gentlemen are now as cruel over their tenants as ever were 
 the Papists, requiring of them the teinds and whatsoever they 
 before paid to the Kirk, so that the papistical tyranny shall only 
 be changed into the tyranny of the lord and laird. . . . Even 
 gentlemen, barons, earls, lords, and others must be content to 
 live upon their just rent, and suffer the Kirk to be restored to her 
 right and liberty, that by her restitution the poor, who heretofore 
 by the cruel Papists have been spoiled and oppressed, may now 
 receive some comfort and relaxation, that their teinds and exac- 
 tions be clean discharged, and no more taken in times coming. 
 The uppermost cloth, the corpse-present, clerk mail, the pasche 
 offering, tiendale, and all handlings upon a land [exactions in the 
 country], can neither be required nor received of good conscience.' 
 
 Knox's theory was to restore at the outset to the oppressed 
 people all that it had been the custom to extort from them by 
 mere superstition, and of the remaining Church property he 
 suggested the disposal in such a way as to provide a modest 
 maintenance for the professors, teachers, and ministers, and to 
 
J4 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 meet the wants of the poor. This was sketched out only as the 
 ultimate destination of the endowments, for to begin with there 
 was of course a heavy charge in the way of meeting vested 
 interests. The priests who refused to conform (there were, how- 
 ever, very many who did so, though they were not always very 
 acceptable accessions to the Protestant ministry) were not allowed 
 to remain in their incumbencies, but none of them that needed 
 were allowed to starve. 
 
 These grand schemes, however, were rendered in a considerable 
 measure abortive by the cupidity of the landholders. It is an 
 obvious calumny to say, that what attracted the barons to the 
 Reformation at the first was their hope of sharing in the spoils of 
 the Church, for, with the Court against them, nobody could have 
 expected the revolution which so soon took place. But it casts a 
 shadow on the subsequent sincerity of some of them, that they 
 made their Protestantism pecuniarily so profitable. And yet, let 
 us not refuse to confess that there was, after all, a certain wild 
 justice in their depredations. The ancestors of these men had 
 given land to the monks under the belief that they could transact 
 for them with Heaven ; and the monks accepted the gifts as for 
 value promised or bestowed. The vanity of the bargain was now 
 disclosed, and goods were reclaimed that had been taken on 
 false pretences. 
 
 5. The First General Assembly. — On the 20th of December 1560, 
 the first General Assembly was held in an old chapel in the 
 Cowgate of Edinburgh which had been dedicated to St. Magdalene. 
 It was not an imposing convocation in point of numbers. There 
 were just six ministers in it, and four-and-thirty elders. But its 
 quality was high, both in respect of the ability and of the social 
 position of its members, and its decisions carried greater weight 
 than always followed the larger gatherings convened afterwards. 
 It met by its own authority. Its right to do so was at an early 
 period challenged by Maitland of Lethington. ' The question is,' 
 said he, 'whether the Queen alloweth such conventions.' 'If the 
 
THE REFORMATION. 35 
 
 liberty of the Kirk,' it was replied, ' should depend on the Queen's 
 allowance or disallowance, we are afraid we shall be deprived 
 not only of Assemblies, but of the public preaching of the gospel.' 
 * No such thing/ argued Maitland. ' Well,' said Knox, ' time will 
 try ; but I will add, take from us the freedom of Assemblies, and 
 take from us the evangel.' Knox was right. Events proved 
 that, in thus claiming at the outset an inherent autonomy for the 
 Church, a principle was laid down of supreme practical import- 
 ance. The Reformers had no idea of doing anything in secret, or 
 doing anything of which they required to be ashamed ; and they 
 suggested to the Queen that if she entertained any suspicions 
 about them, she might send a representative of the Crown to hear 
 their deliberations. Hence arose the office of Lord High Com- 
 missioner. But from the beginning the freedom of the Church 
 was emphatically asserted, and the presence of a Commissioner 
 was never held to imply any right on the part of Majesty to 
 constitute or dissolve General Assemblies. 
 
 Under the arrangements made for the occupation of the field, 
 Knox became minister of Edinburgh ; and in the Cathedral of 
 St. Giles he continued till his death to deliver from week to 
 week those powerful harangues in which the gospel was faithfully 
 proclaimed, and the principles of the Christian religion fearlessly 
 applied to all the conditions of social and political life. 
 
 6. Character of the Reformers. — Like all great men who have 
 been instrumental in their day in achieving radical changes, Knox 
 has been exposed to an extraordinary amount of abuse. He has 
 been called a bigot, a brute, and a hypocrite. The destruction of 
 the monasteries has been ascribed to him. He is thought of, in 
 certain circles, as having committed a nameless atrocity in making 
 Queen Mary weep. And those who know nothing of religious 
 earnestness themselves, have been quick to see sinister purposes in 
 everything he did. But as the clouds of prejudice disperse, his 
 character comes out ever more and more clear and grand. It is 
 now made certain that the religious houses fell a prey to popular 
 
36 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 outbursts, which Knox, instead of inciting, did his best o control. 
 Mary's tears look greatly less precious in the light of Froude's 
 revelations of her conduct. And as to his sincerity, his whole 
 life and writings speak for him. The more one looks into the 
 history of the period, the more plainly it is seen that the conflict 
 was waged around positions, the very nature of which irreligious 
 politicians cannot understand. The deepest questions in debate 
 were not about Church Government and Forms of Worship. 
 Men were brought face to face with far profounder problems — 
 with problems touching the very heart of the Christian life. 
 It was keenly realized that Christ had been displaced from His 
 position of Mediator, and that no satisfactory reformation could 
 be accomplished unless He was restored. This is seen at once 
 in the defences of the Reformers and the fulminations of their 
 enemies. Both went below the surface of things to the root of 
 the matter, and made it plain what the battle was felt to be 
 about. Knox taught ' that there is no other name by which 
 men can be saved but that of Jesus, and that all reliance on the 
 merits of others is vain and delusive ; that the Saviour having 
 by His one sacrifice sanctified and reconciled to God those who 
 should inherit the promised kingdom, all other sacrifices which 
 men pretended to offer for sin are blasphemous, and all men 
 ought to hate sin, which is so odious before God that no sacrifice 
 but the death of His Son could satisfy it.' For this teaching the 
 Papal authorities passed upon him a sentence of death ; and as he 
 was then furth of the kingdom, they burnt him in effigy. The 
 truth is, that 'the life' in the Church was then struggling to 
 manifest and extend itself, and that the Roman Church of the 
 time represented the antagonistic elements of anti-Christianism 
 and unbelief. What occurred was not a mere intellectual renais- 
 sance, but a spiritual revival. 
 
 Hamilton, Wishart, Knox, — these are the outstanding figures 
 which meet the eye as it traces the Reformation movement back 
 from its completion to its rise. But they were by no means the 
 only remarkable men who were raised up to aid in the work. 
 
THE REFORMATION. 37 
 
 Not to speak of the first preachers, some of whom seem to have 
 possessed high gifts as such, few ages have produced more 
 accomplished scholars than George Buchanan and John Row, or 
 abler politicians than Maitland of Lethington and the Regent 
 Murray. 
 
 7. Mary Queen of Scots. — It must be admitted that the course 
 of public events subsequently to 1560 contributed materially to 
 the confirmation of the change which was then made in the 
 religion of the country. 
 
 James V. was the last of the Scottish kings before the Reforma- 
 tion. He was a nephew of Henry VIII. of England, and for a 
 time it seemed as if he might follow in his uncle's footsteps. 
 But his own priesthood, and the influence of his wife Mary of 
 Guise, prevented that, and he died leaving behind him unmis- 
 takable proofs of his devotion to the Papacy. The crown at his 
 death passed to his daughter, an infant, the unfortunate Mary 
 Queen of Scots, whose whole education from first to last came to 
 be of a kind to fill her with hatred of the Reformation. Just one 
 year after the disestablishment of the Church of Rome — that was 
 in August 1 561 — Mary landed at Leith from France, and was 
 welcomed by the people with joyful acclamations. She was young 
 and beautiful, and had the reputation of being clever and accom- 
 plished, and there was something romantic and captivating in 
 her return as the widow of a French prince to occupy the throne 
 of her ancestors. It did not seem likely that a girl queen 
 received in such a way, would do much, at least soon, to disturb 
 the order of things. But she had not been many days in Holy- 
 rood before the Reformers saw that they had good cause for 
 anxiety. She ordered Mass to be celebrated in her private 
 chapel; and she so fascinated the nobles who came to her Court 
 by her charming manners, that the roughest of them refused to 
 listen to a word against anything she did. The reaction came 
 so quickly, and was so influential while it lasted, that, if nothing 
 had occurred to arrest it, the restoration of Popery before many 
 
38 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 years had passed would almost certainly have been accomplished. 
 But happily for the cause which she sought to overthrow, Mary 
 wanted the personal qualities needed to make her triumph. She 
 was passionate, imprudent, and unprincipled, and in seven 
 years she was not, as she hoped to be, the unchallenged mistress 
 of Scotland, with Protestantism under her feet, but a fugitive in 
 England, looking forward to a scaffold. That the tide which 
 came in with her accession did not sweep all before it, was due 
 in great measure to Knox, who gave fearless expression through 
 the pulpit to what is now uttered through the press — the voice of 
 public opinion. But even his efforts would not have availed, if it 
 had not been, first, for the Queen's foolish love for Darnley (a 
 youth of nineteen) ; next, for the suspicions roused about foreign 
 conspiracies, and by the favour shown to Rizzio ; and, lastly, by 
 the murder of her husband, and her shameless marriage with 
 Both well. No popularity could have borne up against such a 
 succession of false steps. The tradition of her beauty and of 
 her charm of manner has procured for the hapless Queen 
 champions in every age, especially among the young and 
 romantic, and among those who are profoundly impressed either 
 by the wickedness or the vulgarity of Protestantism. But 
 candour among historians is no longer an unknown quality, and 
 among people not led away by fancy or prejudice, it is now 
 generally conceded that Mary, morally, is a most forbidding 
 character, and that while her talent, if regulated by prudence, 
 might have ruined the Reformation, her wickedness and folly 
 contributed to its confirmation. 
 
 1. How did the Scotch become acquainted with Ltither's teaching! 
 
 2. Name so?ne of the leaders of the Reformation. 
 
 3. Where was Knox born ? and when ? 
 
 4. When did he avow himself a Protestant ? 
 
 5. What service did he render to Wishari ? 
 
 6. How was he led to become a preacher ? 
 
 7. What position did he Jill in England? 
 
 8. Give some account of his life abroad. 
 
 9. When did he return to Scotland ? 
 
THE REFORMATION. 39 
 
 io. Describe the condition of things when he arrived. 
 
 1 1. Give an outline of his plan for the work of the Church. 
 
 1 2. What did he propose for education ? 
 
 13. How were the Church finds disposed of ? 
 
 14. When was the first Assembly held? 
 
 15. What question was raised about its meeting? 
 
 16. What influence had Mary Queen of Scots on the Reformation ? 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 PRESBYTERY AND PRELACY. 
 
 After the death of Mary, Scotland never ran any very serious 
 risk ot relapsing into Romanism. The Spanish Armada, which 
 sailed in 1588 with the design of restoring the Papal supremacy 
 in England, would of course have brought the cloud back upon us 
 if it had been successful ; but it was called ' invincible ' only by its 
 organizers. It is not very likely that Spain would have subdued 
 Britain under any circumstances ; and at no subsequent time was 
 the cause of the Reformation ever very directly threatened. 
 
 1. Tulchan Bishops. — But the Church was on that account by 
 no means through the breakers. A new struggle soon began for 
 the right to shape itself according to its own convictions. It 
 might seem at first that it could not signify much to any one 
 but itself what form of government it chose to adopt. In a very 
 short time, however, it was made clear that there were various 
 parties keenly and personally interested in the matter. Among 
 these, to begin with, were some of the nobles, who saw with concern 
 the life interests of the old bishops and abbots gradually lapsing, 
 and the lands they held falling into the possession of the Church. 
 To prevent this catastrophe, as they regarded it, an informal 
 Assembly, called in history ' The Convention of Leithj was held 
 in 1572, and there, through the influence of the Regent Morton 
 and others, an Act was passed providing for the restoration of 
 the old hierarchical titles. The men who brought about this 
 change had no idea of making prelates after the old fashion. 
 Their plan was simply to create an order of middle -men, through 
 
 40 
 
PRESBYTERY AND PRELACY. 4 1 
 
 whom they might themselves get possession of the ecclesiastical 
 endowments. A simple or obsequious minister, with perhaps a 
 flavour of vanity in him, was to allow himself to be named (say) 
 Bishop of Dunkeld. As such he would have certain rights which 
 he might enforce, but to these, as a condition of his appointment, 
 he was to sign his title away to his patrons. The arrangement 
 was received in the country with derision. The men who consented 
 to play the ignoble part of catspaw to greedy nobles were nick- 
 named ' Tulchan Bishops,' in allusion to the device of placing a 
 stuffed calf beside a cow to induce her to yield her milk, and the 
 new dignitaries were for a season more laughed at than feared. 
 Especially was this the case when the succeeding General 
 Assembly refused to recognise this sham episcopate, and when it 
 seemed to be settled that Morton's bishops were to have no 
 ecclesiastical standing. But, all the same, the thin end of the 
 wedge was introduced. The idea was started that Episcopacy 
 might ultimately become the form of government in the Scottish 
 as in the English Church. It was assumed that toward the 
 settlement of that point the Court or the State had a right to 
 contribute. And around this centre a battle raged which did not 
 end for a century. 
 
 2. The Course of the Controversy. — The era during which the 
 question of Presbytery versus Prelacy came into greatest pro- 
 minence was that which extended from 1572 to 1638. The other 
 principle, that of the right of the Church to shape its own con- 
 stitution, was also then necessarily discussed ; but it was during 
 the later period, the distinctively 'covenanting' period, that it 
 was brought most conspicuously to the front, along with questions 
 which cut to the quick, bearing on the right of private judgment 
 and on civil and religious liberty. 
 
 When Knox died, in 1572, James Vl., the son of Mary and 
 Darnley, was but a child, and the kingdom was under a regency. 
 This office the Earl of Morton held from 1572 to 1578. In the 
 latter year the young King — a boy of twelve — was persuaded and 
 
42 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 helped to take the reins of Government into his own hand. 
 That meant, of course, that others ruled in his name ; and, un- 
 fortunately, these others were not men qualified to guide him 
 rightly. His was not a fine character at the best, and it was not 
 made better by the society of his first favourites. These were a 
 Scoto-Frenchman whom he created Earl of Lennox, and (strange 
 to say) a brother-in-law of Knox, a younger son of Lord Ochiltree, 
 whom he made Earl of Arran. The state of things brought about 
 by this change soon became intolerable, and there took place in 
 1582 what is known in history as 'The Raid of Ruthven.' A 
 party of dissatisfied nobles seized the King's person. The 
 favourites were for a time driven from the Court, and under 
 new and better influences the Church and country prospered. 
 But the tide again turned. The Earl of Arran regained his 
 old ascendancy over the King, and James, who believed the 
 Ruthven Raid to be inspired by some of the ministers, showed a 
 disposition to be revenged. Andrew Melville, the champion of 
 Presbytery and the successor of Knox in the leadership of the 
 Church, was obliged to flee, and in 1584 what are known as The 
 Black Acts of this period were passed. These Acts ordained 
 that no Assembly could meet without the King's permission ; that 
 no one was to be at liberty to say a word in public or private 
 against the Government ; that to decline the judgment of the 
 Privy Council in any cause, was to be regarded as high treason ; 
 and that all ministers were to acknowledge the bishops as their 
 ecclesiastical superiors. Such laws produced momentary con- 
 sternation, and were the cause of some suffering ; but that they 
 were the outcome of passion and not of deliberation, was almost 
 absurdly proved by subsequent events. Three years later, in 1587, 
 an Act of what we would call disendowment took place, attaching 
 the temporalities of all benefices to the Crown. This made 
 the maintenance of a dignified Episcopacy well-nigh impossible. 
 But in 1590 the fickle King took a further step. He had 
 married a Danish princess, and on coming home with his bride 
 he had found that, thanks to the Presbyterian ministers, things 
 
PRESBYTERY AND PRELACY. 43 
 
 had gone well in his absence. This, and his kindly reception on 
 returning, seems to have put him in high good humour. He 
 attended the General Assembly, and made a speech which pro- 
 duced quite a furor of enthusiasm. ' He fell forth praising God 
 that he was born in such a time as the time of the light of the 
 gospel, and to be king in the sincerest Kirk in the world. The 
 Kirk of Geneva,' he went on to say with a sneer, ' keepeth Pasche 
 and Yule [Easter and Christmas] ; what have they for them ? 
 They have no institution. As for our neighbour Kirk in England, 
 it is an ill-said Mass in English, wanting nothing but the liftings 
 [the elevation of the host]. ... I charge you, my good people, 
 ministers, doctors, nobles, gentlemen, and barons, to stand to 
 your purity ; and I, forsooth, so long as I brook my life and 
 crown, shall maintain the same against all deadly.' No wonder 
 that after such an oration ' there was nothing heard for a 
 quarter of an hour but praising God and praying for the King.' 
 Nor did the fit pass immediately. In June 1592, Parliament 
 repealed the Black Acts, gave its formal sanction to Presby- 
 terianism, and directed that presentees to parishes should be 
 settled without regard to the concurrence of any bishops. Thus 
 the episode of the Ruthven Raid seemed to have, in the long run, 
 ended happily enough. 
 
 3. Question of Toleration. — But again the clouds gathered in the 
 sky. James and the Protestant clergy came into collision on the 
 subject of extending toleration to some of the Popish nobles. 
 Theoretically, perhaps, the King was in the right. Religious 
 liberty was not so well understood in those days as it is now. 
 But we must not judge of the conduct of the two parties by 
 abstract standards. The times in which they lived were peculiar. 
 James was not only King of Scotland, but the heir apparent of 
 the English throne. His vain and vacillating character was well 
 known to those who were plotting in France and Spain and else- 
 where for the restoration of the Papal supremacy. And the 
 question of whether reactionaries of a dangerous type should be 
 
44 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 welcomed at Holyrood or debarred from it was one of practical 
 politics. There was no daily press to discuss the subject. The 
 preacher, rightly or wrongly, was forced to become the tribune of 
 the people. And out of the controversy thus raised sprang 
 another scheme for licking the Church into a shape in which it 
 would be less inconveniently aggressive. 
 
 It was in connection with this agitation that Andrew Melville 
 addressed to the astonished King his famous remonstrance. 
 
 ' I must tell you,' said he, ' there are two kings and two 
 kingdoms in Scotland ; there is King James, the head of this 
 commonwealth ; and there is Chris Jesus, the King of the 
 Church, whose subject James the Sixth is, and of whose 
 kingdom he is not a king, nor a lord, nor a head, but a member. 
 We will yield to you your place, and give you all due obedience ; 
 but again I say you are not the Head of the Church. You cannot 
 give us that eternal life which we seek for even in this world, and 
 you cannot deprive us of it.' 
 
 Such boldness was not likely to be acceptable to one whose 
 views of the Crown prerogatives were always growing higher. 
 He now evidently came to the conclusion that Presbyterianism 
 would never tolerate his freehanded management of affairs, and 
 that Episcopacy on that account behoved to be re-established. 
 
 He proceeded to the work of restoration with considerable 
 astuteness. First, he asked the General Assembly to appoint 
 Commissioners with whom he could confer on the business of the 
 Church. The Assembly did not see the trap laid for it, and 
 consented. Then he got Parliament to declare that the clergy 
 constituted the Third Estate of the realm, and he invited the 
 Commissioners to take their seats in the House with the nominal 
 rank of bishops. The Assembly now saw the snare, and inter- 
 posed its veto. But James contrived to bring together meetings 
 of ministers and elders, whom he succeeded in overawing, 
 and the upshot was that, with the apparent consent of the 
 representatives of the Church, three men were appointed to the 
 Bishoprics of Ross, Aberdeen, and Caithness. 
 
PRESBYTERY AND PRELACY. 45 
 
 4. King James in England. — Three years later, in 1603, Eliza- 
 beth died, and James became King of England. The new 
 atmosphere into which he was now introduced seemed to 
 intoxicate him. Speaking at the celebrated Hampton Court 
 Conference, which was held soon after his coronation, he con- 
 gratulated himself on having reached ' the promised land, where 
 religion was professed in its purity, where he sat among grave, 
 learned, and reverent men, and that now he was not, as 
 formerly, a king without State and honour, nor in a place 
 where order was banished, and beardless boys would brave 
 him to his face.' 
 
 Sentiments like these did not bode well for the Kirk of 
 Scotland. Nor was there anything more promising in his 
 proclaiming on the same occasion a maxim which had become 
 a favourite with him, ' No Bishop ! no King ! ' It had, in 
 fact, come to this, that, in his judgment, Presbyterianism was 
 incompatible with monarchy, and that its suppression was a 
 State necessity. 
 
 The story of the process by which the King brought about 
 the submission of the Scottish Church illustrates the threat 
 which he uttered at Hampton Court against the Puritans. 
 'I'll make them conform,' said he, 'or I'll harry them out of 
 the land.' First of all, he set himself to suppress the right 
 of free Assemblies, and after a struggle he succeeded. Of 
 the bold men who ventured to hold a meeting without his 
 permission, six were tried for high treason and banished. Then 
 Andrew Melville was summoned to London and committed to the 
 Tower, where he remained for four years. At the end of that 
 time he was permitted to retire to France, and he died a 
 professor in the Protestant College of Sedan. The next step 
 was to secure to the bishops precedence in all Church Courts, or, 
 as it was expressed, to get them made constant Moderators. 
 This was done in a packed and corrupted Assembly, held in 
 1610. Previously to that, Parliament had obsequiously repealed 
 so much of the Act of Annexation (1587) as applied to the 
 
46 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 secularization of the bishops' lands. And suitable means having 
 thus been provided, Prelacy full fledged was imposed upon the 
 land, three men going to England to receive consecration from 
 a Church in which, as was supposed, the apostolic succession 
 was surer, and coming back to communicate the grace they 
 had got, independently of all presbyterial action. 
 
 It is curious that the people seem to have borne all this with 
 patience. They may have been angry, but they were certainly 
 not violent. It was different, however, when the King, on the 
 occasion of his first visit to his native country, in 1617, proposed 
 to introduce visible changes into their forms and habits of wor- 
 ship. An Assembly, called and inspired by himself, passed five 
 new regulations, which, from the place in which they were 
 proposed, are known by the name of the Five Articles of Perth. 
 These ordained — (1) That the Lord's Supper should be received 
 kneeling ; (2) That it might be administered in private ; (3) 
 That baptism also might be private ; (4) That children should 
 be confirmed ; and (5) That Christmas, Easter, etc, should be 
 observed as holidays. Some of these points are not now con- 
 sidered very material ; and it is consequently assumed in certain 
 circles that the outcry that was raised against them was 
 ridiculous. But it need scarcely be said that a deeper explana- 
 tion must be sought for the agitation aroused, than what is 
 supplied by the subject-matter of the precepts read in the light of 
 the nineteenth century. The King had claimed the right to regu- 
 late the worship of the Church. His appeal to the Assembly, such 
 as it was, was merely firo forma. There was good cause to 
 apprehend that there was a plot on foot to assimilate the Scottish 
 Church in all respects to what was regarded as the half reformed 
 Church of England. And the changes proposed brought the 
 contemplated revolution home to those most interested. 
 
 No open insurrection occurred, however, till a number of years 
 afterwards. At first the new ordinance was a dead letter. 
 Ministers and people kept to the old fashions, and the bishops 
 were afraid to provoke an cmeutc by interfering. But as things 
 
PRESBYTERY AND PRELACY. 4 7 
 
 went on the prelates grew in dignity and boldness, and less and 
 less toleration was shown toward those who refused to conform. 
 A crash sooner or later was inevitable, and it came in a very 
 dramatic way. 
 
 5. Charles I. and Laud.-— James died in 1625, and was succeeded 
 by his son Charles I., a much more respectable man in many 
 ways, but with faults of character quite as conspicuous. Charles 
 believed devoutly that he reigned by a divine right, and that he 
 was entitled to demand from his people submission to his will 
 in all things ; and when opposition was offered to him, he had no 
 hesitation in making and breaking engagements with the leaders 
 of it, on the principle apparently that no faith was to be kept 
 with rebels. He paid his first visit to Scotland in 1633, and 
 gave the people there a taste of what he had in store for them, 
 by keeping the Sabbath after the manner of the Book of Sports, 
 and by forcing the Parliament to confer upon him power to 
 regulate ecclesiastical vestments. What he did in these matters 
 was, no doubt, by the advice of Laud, afterwards Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, who accompanied him on this occasion, and who 
 seems to have been much affected by the baldness of our 
 Scottish ritual. Hitherto Knox's Liturgy, as it is called, had 
 been in use where needed. It had been prepared to meet the 
 necessities of post- Reformation times, when ministers were 
 few, and public worship could not have been maintained in 
 many places at all, except by the agency of ' Readers ' using 
 the Book of Common Order. As vacancies were filled up by 
 educated men, the Liturgy naturally fell aside. But, of course, 
 "it regained its position under the Episcopal system, and this 
 was the form which Laud met when he went with the King to 
 St. Giles'. That a high Anglican such as he was should have 
 been dissatisfied, is not to be wondered at. He went home with 
 the determination to provide for the benighted Scotch a better 
 Service Book ; and sure enough, what was meant to be a great 
 boon to our nation in due time arrived. It arrived, not in the 
 
48 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 booksellers' shops, to be bought by anybody who wanted it. 
 It arrived, not for delivery to the General Assembly, to be 
 examined and approved. It arrived with a sovereign law 
 behind it, ordering every minister to provide himself at once 
 with two copies on pain of deprivation, and directing its 
 immediate adoption by all the congregations of the Church. 
 
 We talk sometimes now-a-days as if our fathers made much 
 ado about nothing. How often, for example, has fun been made 
 of the incident which marked the introduction of Laud's Service 
 Book into St. Giles'? The Dean of Edinburgh, clad in his 
 surplice, had just begun to read it, when Jenny Geddes, 
 an apple-woman from the neighbourhood, flung her stool 
 at his head, crying, * Fause loon, dost thou say Mass at my 
 lug ! ' With what lofty pity have English and Scottish 
 Episcopalians smiled at this outbreak of ignorant fanaticism ! 
 'What was the good dean doing?' they say, — ' Only reading a 
 prayer! Think of the perverted condition of a people who 
 could not stand so much as that ! ' But who that knows anything 
 of the subject, does not know that 'reading a prayer' had no 
 connection with the outburst? The Scottish people had no 
 objection to the reading of prayers when it was necessary. The 
 indignation was caused, first, by the character of the Service Book 
 itself (it was merely an amended edition of the Roman Missal) ; 
 and, secondly, by the manner of its introduction. No doubt, we 
 of the nineteenth century are a law-abiding, much enduring 
 people. The Scotch have borne patiently at times what would 
 have provoked a rebellion in Ireland. But we venture to affirm 
 that an imposition anything like that which Charles I. attempted 
 in 1637, could not be made in 1882 without evoking a burst of 
 indignation as threatening to the Crown as the riot whose 
 dramatic beginning we have just described. 
 
 When an avalanche is about to fall, the shout of a single hunter 
 is sufficient to set the mass in motion. The nation was ripe for 
 insurrection against the intolerable rule of Charles and his 
 advisers, and the protest of Jenny Geddes became the signal for 
 
PRESBYTERY AND PRELACY. 49 
 
 a general uprising. So far as Scotland was concerned, the 
 revolution was accomplished with perfect quietness, and without 
 a drop of bloodshed. The Privy Council in Edinburgh at once 
 recognised the situation, and permitted the formation of what 
 was virtually a provisional government. Four Committees — or 
 Tables, as they were called — were established — one for the 
 nobility, one for the barons, a third for the towns, and a fourth 
 for the Church ; and under the direction of this body the 
 negotiations with the King were carried on, and likewise the 
 proceedings which followed. 
 
 6. The National Covenant. — First, however, a step was taken 
 which contributed more than anything else could have done to 
 the success of the movement. This was the renewing of the 
 National Coveiiant. The Covenant had been drawn up in 1580, 
 and had been then signed by the King and many of his subjects. 
 It was a bond engaging its subscribers to adhere to and defend 
 the doctrine and discipline of the Reformed Church of Scotland. 
 It was now wisely thought that by catching up the spirit of the 
 past in this way, the religious enthusiasm of the nation would 
 be awakened, and the personal devotion of all who were in 
 sympathy with it secured. And the result showed that there was 
 no mistake in this calculation. On the 1st March 1638, in the 
 Greyfriars' Church, Edinburgh, after an address by the Earl of 
 Loudon, and prayer by Alexander Henderson, the signing of the 
 Covenant began. All ranks and all classes signed it — nobles, 
 gentry, ministers, the mass of the people. The immense sheet of 
 parchment which had been prepared was soon filled, and late 
 comers had to seek corners where to place their initials. Very 
 many were in tears, and yet there was gladness in the sorrow, 
 indicating a happy consciousness that the nightmare under which 
 they had been groaning was over, and that the dawn of a better 
 day had begun. 
 
 ' To this much vilified bond, r it has been said, 'every true 
 Scotsman ought to look back with as much reverence as English- 
 
50 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 men do to their Magna Charta. It was what saved the country 
 from absolute despotism ; and to it we may trace back the origin 
 of all the efforts made by the inhabitants of Britain in defence of 
 their freedom during the succeeding reign of the Stuarts.' 
 
 7. The Glasgow Assembly. — What happened in the interval, 
 between March and November, when the famous Glasgow 
 Assembly was held, need not be particularly rehearsed. The 
 history of that period shows the King acting with the characteristic 
 infatuation and duplicity of his family, and the people open to 
 guilelessness to be moved by any act of kindness but resolute 
 to obstinacy in the rejection of whatever tended to the restoration 
 of the old order of things. ' I intend not to yield to the demands 
 of these traitors the Covenanters,' wrote Charles himself. 'And 
 as concerning the explanation of their damnable Covenant, I 
 will only say that so long as this Covenant is in force, whether 
 it be with or without explanation, I have no more power of 
 Scotland than a Duke of Venice would have. I will rather die 
 than suffer it.' This was a declaration of war a outrance j and 
 when the General Assembly, which he had been persuaded to call 
 in the hope of composing things, met on the 21st of November, 
 he had very plain indication given him that the patience of his 
 Scottish subjects had also reached its limit, and that they meant 
 to maintain the liberties of the Church at all hazards. 
 
 The Assembly of 1638 was socially one of the most influential 
 that ever sat in Scotland. It was composed of 140 ministers and 
 98 ruling elders — the latter including 17 noblemen of the highest 
 rank, nine knights, and 25 landed proprietors. Alexander 
 Henderson, minister of Leuchars, was chosen Moderator, and 
 the Marquis of Hamilton was present as Lord High Commis- 
 sioner. It began serenely in the interchange of courtesies 
 between the Moderator and the Commissioner — Henderson 
 being profuse in his professions of loyalty to the King in all civil 
 matters. But the wind at once changed when serious business 
 was proceeded with. It immediately appeared that this Assembly, 
 
PRESBYTERY AND PRELACY. 5 I 
 
 in its representative character, claimed a sovereign right to carry- 
 out the convictions of the Church as to its own position and 
 duty. In the exercise of that right it abolished the Episcopal 
 form of Church government, and removed the bishops from 
 their offices — declaring at the same time as of no effect the Five 
 Articles of Perth, and the Ordinances about the Service Book. 
 The Marquis of Hamilton did not stay to countenance these bold 
 acts of defiance of his master's will. He left protesting at an 
 early stage. But his absence, though deeply lamented, was not 
 considered to affect the essential authority of the Assembly. 
 The Moderator, by a happy allusion to the zeal of the Commis- 
 sioner for King Charles' honour, suggested an argument which 
 was felt to tell powerfully on the other side. ' All who are 
 present/ said he, 'know the reasons of the meeting of this 
 Assembly ; and albeit we have acknowledged the power ot 
 Christian kings for convening of Assemblies, yet that may not 
 derogate from Christ's right, for He hath given divine warrants 
 to convocate Assemblies, whether magistrates consent or not. 
 Therefore, seeing we perceive his grace my Lord High Commis- 
 sioner to be so zealous of his royal master's commands, have we 
 not also good reason to be zealous toward our Lord, and to 
 maintain the liberties and privileges of His kingdom?' The 
 Assembly sat from the 21st November to the 20th December, 
 and was dismissed by the Moderator in an eloquent closing 
 address, which ended with these words : ' We have now cast 
 down the walls of Jericho ; let him that rebuildeth them beware 
 of the curse of Hiel the Bethelite.' 
 
 8. Reasons for the Uprising of the People. — Men will judge of 
 this remarkable convocation from their several standpoints. An 
 Erastian will pronounce it lawless — Episcopalians will call it 
 fanatical — and that numerous class of persons who have no faith 
 in pure motives in any connection will account for it by saying 
 that the lairds were angry because of the resumption of the 
 bishops' lands. But no man of intelligence with any candour will 
 
52 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 hesitate to acknowledge that there were things about the 
 Assembly of 1638 which none of these theories explain. In 
 the first place, it was obviously the outcome not of sectional, but 
 of national dissatisfaction. Then the speeches delivered in it 
 were on the whole singularly moderate and well-toned. And 
 further, the men composing it were many of them so distinguished 
 for their piety, learning, and weight of character, that it is 
 extremely difficult to conceive of them as carried away by a mere 
 blind and unreasoning madness. 
 
 Anyhow, there must have been good cause why a whole people 
 should have thus risen as one man against the Prelacy to which 
 they had been accustomed for thirty years, and under which 
 many of them had been born. It had become hateful to them, 
 not so much as a Church system, but as a political system. It 
 represented the idea of foreign interference with their internal 
 affairs — an impertinent attempt on the part of strangers to rule 
 them in the domain of conscience. They had borne the 
 burden long, as a patient and peaceable people is so ready to 
 do, and because no suitable means of deliverance appeared. 
 But they had been groaning for years under the load of oppres- 
 sion, and when at last the opportunity for relieving themselves 
 of it presented itself, they seized it. with an eagerness and a 
 unanimity which spoke volumes for their previously pent - up 
 indignation. 
 
 Besides, apart from all abstract questions as to Church govern- 
 ment, and as to the ways in which new forms may warrantably be 
 introduced, the Scottish people had had abundant opportunities 
 for comparing Presbyterianism and Episcopacy together, and 
 for coming to a conclusion as to the suitableness of each to the 
 genius and condition of an intelligent and independent nation. 
 
 'The earnestness,' says Dr. Rainy in his reply to Stanley, 
 ' with which Presbyterianism was maintained, was due to some- 
 thing else besides the confidence men had in their theoretical 
 conclusions about Church government. Everything that is 
 theoretically good and true has a practical value in itself, from 
 
PRESBYTERY AND PRELACY. 53 
 
 which it receives daily confirmation. So it was with Presby- 
 terianism. Presbyterianism meant organized life, regulated 
 distribution of forces, graduated recognition of gifts, freedom to 
 discuss, authority to control, agency to administer. Presby- 
 terianism meant a system by which the convictions and conscience 
 of the Church could constantly be applied by appropriate organs 
 to her affairs. Presbyterianism meant a system by which 
 quickening influence, anywhere experienced in the Church, could 
 be turned into effective force, and transmitted to fortify the whole 
 society. Presbyterianism meant a system in which every man — 
 first of all the common man — had his recognised place, his 
 defined position, his ascertained and guarded privileges, his 
 responsibilities inculcated and enforced, — felt himself a part of the 
 great unity, with a right to care for its welfare and to guard its 
 integrity. From the broad basis of the believing people, the sap 
 rose through sessions, presbyteries, synods, to the Assembly, 
 and thence descending diffused knowledge, influence, organic 
 unity through the whole system. . . . Our fathers felt instinctively 
 that the changes thrust upon them threatened to suppress great 
 elements of good— not mere forms alone, but the life which these 
 forms nourished and expressed. When Episcopacy shall have 
 trained the common people to care, as those of Scotland have 
 cared, for the public interests of Christ's Church, and to connect 
 that care with their own religious life as a part and a fruit of it, 
 then it may afford to smile at the zealous self-defence of Scottish 
 Presbyterianism.' 
 
 9. The Church Leaders of the Time. — In the outline given above, 
 we have sought to supply a bird's-eye view of the history of the 
 Church from the outside, a sketch of how it was shaped and 
 directed by external influences. But we shall get a very imperfect 
 idea of the real condition of affairs during the period reviewed, if 
 we do not go within the gates and look at things from the 
 interior. 
 
 And here, first of all, it seems desirable that we should make 
 
54 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 the acquaintance of some of the men by whose personal influence 
 the time was fashioned. It is certain that some fancy pictures 
 exist in this connection. A common notion is that the Presby- 
 terian ministers of that period were a set of ignorant, obstinate 
 persons, who thwarted the King through pure perversity. Alas ! 
 the truth is that they were, as a whole, only too easy and pliable. 
 If it had not been for a few stronger-minded men who stood by 
 the helm in all weathers, the ship would often have been allowed 
 to drift. It is, however, just as great a mistake to suppose (as 
 with our characteristic nineteenth century self-complacency we are 
 so apt to do) that the clergy as a rule were uncouth and unlettered, 
 and that even the leaders were, in respect of piety and learning, a 
 long way behind their critics in the present age. 
 
 10. Andrew Melville. — The name of Andrew Melville has been 
 mentioned once or twice. Who was he ? He was a younger 
 son of a Laird of Baldowy, who, with most of the gentlemen 
 of Angus, was slain 'in the vanguard of the field of Pinkie.' 
 After learning all that the Montrose schools could teach him, he 
 went to St. Andrews, which he by and by left 'with the com- 
 mendation of the best philosopher, poet, and Grecian of any 
 young master in the land.' Next he proceeded to Paris, where 
 he studied for tv/o years, and where he became so expert in 
 Greek that he could declaim in it fluently. From Paris he went 
 on to Poitiers, and afterwards to Geneva, where, through the 
 recommendation of Beza, he was appointed Professor of Latin — 
 an office which he held for five years. During this time his 
 chief study was theology, in which he had Beza for his master; 
 but he had lessons also in the Oriental tongues from Cornelius 
 Bonaventura. When Melville got back to his native land again, 
 in 1574, he found that his reputation had preceded him. The 
 Regent Morton invited him to become his domestic chaplain, but 
 the aspirations of the young scholar inclined toward a professor- 
 ship, and he accepted instead the appointment of Principal of the 
 University of Glasgow. The list of what he taught in that capa- 
 
PRESBYTERY AND PRELACY. 55 
 
 city almost takes one's breath away. It included Greek, Hebrew, 
 Mathematics, Moral Philosophy, Natural History, Theology, and 
 the Exegesis of the Old and New Testaments, t His learning 
 and painfulness,' says his nephew in his Autobiography, 'was 
 mickle admired, so that the name of the college within two years 
 was noble throughout all the land, and in other countries also. 
 Such as had passed their course in St. Andrews came in numbers 
 there, and entered scholars again under order and discipline, so 
 that the college was so frequented that the rooms were nocht 
 able to receive them.' With all his learning, Melville anything 
 but realized the novelist's ideal of a sour and narrow Puritan. 
 One of his favourite pastimes was writing Latin verses, and his 
 pleasantry was so irrepressible that he was followed by a ripple 
 of kindly laughter even to the Tower. But he had strong convic- 
 tions, and he was perfectly fearless in maintaining these. Like 
 many other scholars of the highest rank, he saw no trace in the 
 Greek New Testament of any office like that of a ' Lord Bishop,' 
 He was not long in his own country without seeing many evidences 
 of the mischief which was being done by the attempt to force 
 Prelacy on the Scottish people. And he threw all the weight of his 
 influence and accomplishments into the Presbyterian scale. To 
 him especially we are indebted for the Second Book of Discififaie, 
 in which the constitution of the Church is defined with extra- 
 ordinary ability and precision. No better justification could be 
 offered for the aversion which was then felt to King James' Episco- 
 pacy than what was furnished by the fact that its establishment 
 rendered necessaiy the banishment of such a man. He was the 
 greatest Scotchman of his day. His departure from Geneva was 
 deplored as an almost irreparable loss. The Universities of 
 Glasgow and St. Andrews offered him in succession the highest 
 places at their disposal. And when, after four years of imprison- 
 ment, he was allowed to go into exile, he was welcomed at once 
 to a continental professorship. One's blood boils even now to 
 think that it was in the power of an unprincipled pedant like 
 James to deprive his country of the services of a scholar like 
 
56 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 Melville. And in any case this will be allowed, that the circum- 
 stances just described as attendant on the introduction of Prelacy, 
 were not of a kind to prepossess us in its favour. 
 
 11. Robert Boyd. — Another man whose character and learning 
 give a very different impression from that which prevails, in 
 certain circles, of the age in which he lived, was Robert Boyd of 
 Trochrigg. ' All accounts, 5 says Dr. Walker in his Cunningha?n 
 Lectures, ' represent him as a most accomplished scholar. A 
 friend said of him, with perhaps some exaggeration, that he 
 was more eloquent in French than in his native tongue ; and 
 Livingstone tells us that he spoke Latin with perfect fluency, 
 but that he had heard him say, if he had his choice he would 
 rather express himself in Greek than in any other language. 
 The Church of Boyd's adoption [that of France], which had 
 given Andrew Melville a chair in one university and Sharp a 
 chair in another, was not slow to do honour to their brilliant 
 countryman. He was made a professor in the University of 
 Saumur ; and there for some years he taught theology. He was 
 persuaded, however, in 16 14, to come home and accept the 
 Principalship of the Glasgow University.' ' Boyd's great work,' 
 adds Dr. Walker, ' is his Commentary on the Epistle to the 
 Ephesians. A work it is of stupendous size and stupendous 
 learning. There is more in it than in the four quarto tomes of 
 Turretin. Its apparatus criticus is something enormous. The 
 Greek and Latin Fathers, the writers of the Dark Ages, the 
 Protestant and Romish theologians of his own time, Justin and 
 Irenoeus, Tertullian and Cyprian, Clement and Origen, Augustine 
 and Jerome, Gregory Nyssen and Gregory Nazianzen, Anselm 
 and Bonaventura and Bernardo, Calvin and Rollock, Bellarmine 
 and Pighius, are all at hand to render and to receive replies.* 
 Boyd's character was as noble as his learning was great. ' He 
 was,' says Livingstone, ' of an austere-like carriage, but of a most 
 tender heart. Notwithstanding of his rare abilities, he had no 
 account of himself, but a high account of every other man's 
 
PRESBYTERY AND PRELACY. 57 
 
 parts, when he perceived any spark of grace and ingenuity 
 [ingenuousness] ; but where these were not, no man was such a 
 severe censurer.' ' He died in his prime, under fifty years of 
 age.' One would expect to hear of a man like that, that he 
 was held in increasing honour in his country ; but here, too, 
 appeared the mischievous influence of the policy of the time. 
 'Though he was far from extreme in his Presbyterianism, he 
 was found to be less tractable than the King and his advisers 
 expected, and was obliged to resign his office. But [happily] he 
 was long enough in Glasgow to leave the impress of himself on 
 some of the young men destined to distinction in the Church in 
 after years.' 
 
 12. David Calderwood. — One other name may be referred to — 
 that of David Calderwood. He was not a member of the 1638 
 Assembly, but his value was so thoroughly well known that, 
 according to Baillie, he was invited to occupy a chamber near 
 that of the moderator in order that he might be always near at 
 hand for consultation — a high compliment, seeing that the 
 Assembly contained an extraordinary number of the ablest men 
 of all ranks then living in the country. ' Banished,' says Dr. 
 Walker, 'for nonconformity, Calderwood found a home in the 
 Low Countries, where he wrote his great work, the Altare 
 Damascenum. It is the most serious attack on Diocesan or 
 rather Anglican Episcopacy which I suppose has ever been 
 made in this country. Patiently and perseveringly Calderwood 
 goes over the whole system, tearing it to pieces as it were bit 
 by bit. The Bible, the Fathers, the Canonists are equally at his 
 command. It does our Church no credit that the Altare has 
 never been translated. It seems to have been more in request 
 out of Scotland than in it. The large and beautiful edition I 
 possess was printed in Amsterdam so late as 1700. Among the 
 Dutch divines he was ever " ementissimus Calderwood." ' 
 
 13. The Age Unappreciated. — These are only a sample of what 
 
58 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 the age furnished. ' The first century of Presbyterianism in 
 Scotland,' says Dr. Walker, 'was one of incessant struggle. 
 During that period you can hardly say that it got twenty 
 years of quiet and peaceful ascendancy. And yet the Scottish 
 Church produced several divines recognised as of the first class 
 among continental Protestants ; it founded an exegetical school 
 from which came commentaries upon all the books of the New 
 Testament and a considerable number of the books of the Old ; 
 and when, after a long down - trampling, it reclaimed and 
 regained its rights in 1638, it was able to send representatives 
 to the Westminster Assembly who could hold their own in 
 every respect, and perhaps more than their own, in one of the 
 most venerable and learned Church conventions of Christian 
 history.' 
 
 How it is to be accounted for it would not be easy to say; 
 but there can be little doubt that in the English mind, and in 
 the minds also of a certain class of Scotch people, the impres- 
 sion prevails that those who of old resisted the imposition of 
 Prelacy on this country were men of the type of Sir Walter 
 Scott's Habakkuk Mucklewrath. It would be well if the truth 
 were better known. The leading Presbyterian ministers of that 
 time were not in the least like the half-educated English Dis- 
 senting village preachers of a past generation, nor were they at 
 all like the ridiculous fanatics whom our own great novelist has 
 created. They were many of them the sons of gentlemen, who 
 had received the best education which the age afforded, and 
 whose learning would have enabled them to make very short 
 work indeed of the great majority of their critics in the present 
 day. It may or may not be foolish to prefer Presbyterianism 
 or Episcopacy ; it may or may not be a pity that our fathers 
 refused to conform in religious matters to the example of Eng- 
 land. But one thing is certain, that those who then acted for 
 us were not men of whom we have any cause to be ashamed, 
 and that for what they did they were able to render fairly 
 weighty reasons. 
 
PRESBYTERY AND PRELACY. 59 
 
 14. Spiritual Life. — There is yet another point of view from 
 which the Church ot that period should be looked at, in order 
 that a just idea may be formed of its character. We have 
 evidence of the most interesting kind that it was spiritually 
 prosperous. In many parts of the country there was a very 
 scanty supply of the means of grace, and there ignorance and 
 religious indifference prevailed. But other localities were more 
 highly favoured, and, in some of these, revivals took place of 
 which memorials remained for several generations. One such 
 awakening occurred, for example, at Stewarton, in connection 
 with the preaching of Mr. David Dickson of Irvine. Dickson 
 was one of the most accomplished men of the time. From 
 Irvine he was transferred to theological professorships, first in 
 Glasgow, and then in Edinburgh. He devoted himself to 
 Biblical studies, and conceived, and so far carried out, the plan 
 of having a Scotch commentary on the whole of Scripture. 
 ■ His plan,' says Dr. Walker, ' was to assign particular books to 
 men competent for the work, and to him we owe it that we 
 have Ferguson on the Epistles, Hutchison on the Minor 
 Prophets, Job, and the Gospel of John ; Durham on the Song of 
 Solomon and the Book of Revelation. Dickson put his own 
 hand to the work. He published English Notes on Matthew 
 and the Epistle to the Hebrews. His exposition of the Psalms 
 is not unknown to Christian readers still, and, besides, we have 
 from him annotations in Latin on the whole of the Epistles.' 
 Such was the man under whom there originated a great religious 
 movement which continued for five years, — from 1625 to 1630, 
 — and which produced a marked change throughout the whole 
 Ayrshire valley which is traversed by Stewarton water. 
 
 But a more remarkable event still was the extraordinary 
 awakening which resulted at the Kirk of Shotts from the preach- 
 ing of John Livingstone. This was in 1630, on the Monday 
 after a communion. Livingstone was then only twenty-seven, 
 and he had no settled charge, but his gifts were known, and he 
 was pressed to preach, sorely against his own inclination. 
 
60 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 1 When I was alone in the fields,' he himself writes, * about eight 
 or nine in the morning - , before we were to go to sermon, there 
 came such a misgiving of spirit upon me, considering my un- 
 worthiness and weakness, and the multitude and expectation of 
 the people, that I was consulting with myself to have stolen away 
 somewhere and declined that day's preaching ; but that I thought 
 I durst not so far distrust God, and so went to sermon and got 
 good assistance.' To this sermon, under the blessing of God, not 
 fewer than five hundred persons ascribed their conversion. 
 
 15. John Livingstone. — To every Cavalier every Roundhead 
 was a hypocrite. In the eyes of an Anglican, Puritanism is 
 superstition or worse ! And we need not be surprised to hear 
 that by some writers John Livingstone is referred to as a 
 Covenanting fanatic. When one thinks of that communion 
 Monday at Shotts, one cannot help wishing that we had more 
 such fanatics. But there are quarters in which the resistless 
 power of his preaching will win for him less respect than such 
 facts as the following, mentioned by Dr. Walker : — ' Livingstone 
 was a scholar such as we shall not readily fall in with in these 
 days in the Church. He knew Hebrew, and Chaldee, and some- 
 thing of Syriac. He had tried his hand, he says, at Arabic. 
 He was sufficiently acquainted with French and Italian to be 
 able to make use of French and Italian books. He could read 
 the Bible, too, in Spanish. And now in his exile [he was one of 
 the Scotchmen whom the rulers thought not fit to live in their 
 own land, and who had been driven in consequence to seek 
 shelter in Holland] he desired to do something whereby the 
 knowledge of the only true God might be more plentifully had 
 out of the original. So he set himself first of all to revising the 
 best Latin text of the Old Testament Scriptures, comparing it 
 with the original Hebrew, intending to print the Hebrew and 
 Latin side by side in separate columns. This work was actually 
 done, and was ready for the press, when the friend died who had 
 consented to bear the responsibility of giving it to the world. 
 
PRESBYTERY AND PRELACY. 6 1 
 
 What became of the fruit of Livingstone's scholarship I do not 
 know ; but,' adds Dr. Walker, ' the fact of it may help to dispel 
 some misconceptions, and give truer notions of Presbyterian 
 learning in the seventeenth century.' 
 
 The quotation leads us back to think again of the scholarly 
 attainments possessed by many of the Scottish ministers of that 
 time ; but the learning of the two eminent revival preachers we 
 have named was not their most marked distinction. They were 
 men of extraordinary piety and fervour, and what is chiefly 
 remembered about them at this day in Scotland is the notable 
 blessing which attended their efforts to persuade men to believe 
 the gospel. It is a most imperfect idea which the ordinary 
 historian gives of the age, when he dwells on the battles about 
 Church government as if these made its greatest incidents. A 
 glance beneath the dust raised by these battles reveals a busier 
 life, occupied with the exposition of Holy Scripture and with the 
 bringing of individual souls under the power of a world to come. 
 
 1. Who were the Tidchan Bishops? 
 
 2. In ivhat respect was the liberty of the Church at this time inter- 
 
 fered with ? 
 
 3. Describe the Raid of Ruthven, and its effects. 
 
 4. Give the date and substance of the Black Acts. 
 
 5. When and under what circumstances did James speak well of 
 
 Presbytery ? 
 
 6. What great lesson did Andrew Melville teach the King ? 
 
 7. Indicate the effect on James of his accession to the throne of England. 
 
 8. How did the King succeed in Episcopizing the Church of Scotland? 
 
 9. Describe the character of Charles I. 
 
 10. How did he reveal his character during his first visit to Scotland? 
 
 11. What was the real catise of the rising of the people against laud's 
 
 Service Book ? 
 
 12. What 7vas the National Covenant? 
 
 13. When was the Glasgow Assembly held? 
 
 14. Describe its compositioti and work. 
 
 15. How do you explain the uprising of the people? 
 
 16. Give some account of the Church leaders of the time. 
 
 17. What erroneous impressions in this connection are abroad? 
 
 18. What was the spiritual condition of the period? 
 
 19. What do we know about John Livingstone? 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH. 
 
 'The opening of the General Assembly of 1638/ says Hill 
 Burton, ' may fairly vie with that of the Long Parliament as a 
 momentous historical event. It was the earlier in time. Had it 
 not been, perhaps the Long Parliament also might not have 
 been. At that juncture, so far as England alone was concerned, 
 the looker-on would have said that the Court would prevail, and 
 that without a struggle. The organization for the collection of 
 ship-money got the prerogative out of its only remaining difficult)', 
 the supply of money capable of supporting a standing arm}-. 
 All things had the aspect of a monarchy serene and absolute, 
 such as Englishmen knew only from specimens on the other side 
 of the Channel. This General Assembly takes precedence in 
 history as the first meeting of a body existing by constitutional 
 sanction, yet giving defiance to the Court. It assembled under 
 royal authority, the King being, through his Commissioner, an 
 element of its constitution.' 
 
 Not many months after this famous Assembly, the Scots were 
 required to take up arms in defence of their liberties. Charles 
 refused to recognise their right to adopt whatever form of Churcli 
 government they chose, and he marched an army to the border 
 to enforce submission to his authority. But he discovered that 
 the subjugation of the Presbyterian 'Tables' would be by no 
 means an easy task. A well-appointed Scottish host tinder the 
 command of General David Leslie gathered around Dunse Law to 
 repel the invader, and the King, considering discretion in the cir- 
 cumstances to be the better part of valour, consented to a compro- 
 
 62 
 
UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH. 63 
 
 mise. This was in August 1639. He was by no means satisfied, 
 however, and in the following year he purposed to resume the 
 offensive. The Parliament he summoned refused to grant him 
 the needful supplies, and he hastily dissolved it ; but Convocation 
 continued sitting after the dissolution, and agreed to help him. 
 With its assistance a fresh force was organized and marched 
 northwards. But the Scottish leaders had now learnt wisdom 
 from the abortive conflict of the previous summer. They did 
 not wait to be attacked. Knowing something of the King's 
 weakness, and of the distracted state of affairs in England, they 
 crossed the Tweed, and met the force moving to assail them in the 
 neighbourhood of Newcastle. The battle which took place there 
 was not a bloody one. The English were out-generaled, and, 
 although their rout was complete, they lost only some forty or 
 fifty men. Nevertheless the incident turned out to be one of 
 high historical importance. What occurred that day had a 
 material influence on the destinies of the empire. 'The battle,' 
 says Hill Burton, 'by which the Scots forced the passage of the 
 Tyne was so momentous that, in critical interest, it may well 
 rival the famous passage of the Rubicon.' 
 
 1. Opening of the Long Parliament. — One consequence of it 
 was the calling of the Long Parliament, that extraordinary 
 assembly which continued to sit for so many years, and under 
 which took place some of the most memorable events in English 
 history. Newcastle was taken by the Scottish army. York was 
 threatened. The King had not resources enough at command 
 to carry on the contest. And now, as formerly, he resorted to 
 negotiation. Before a suitable treaty, however, could be arranged, 
 it was necessary to have the concurrence and help of the Legis- 
 lature. For this and other reasons the country was asked again 
 to send representatives to St. Stephen's, and the appeal issued in 
 the election of a House of Commons which contained an unusual 
 number of able men, but which very speedily showed itself to be 
 a formidable embodiment of the national indignation and dis- 
 
64 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 content. The battle of Newbury was fought in September 1640. 
 Negotiations with a view to peace commenced in London on the 
 26th of October following. And the Long Parliament began to 
 sit on the 3d of November thereafter. There was, however, 
 much to be done besides attending to the affairs of Scotland. 
 One of the first acts of the new Parliament was to arrest and 
 bring to trial the chief instruments of the King's tyranny, 
 Strafford and Archbishop Laud. Another was to release from 
 prison a number of individuals who by their directions were 
 suffering for conscience' sake. And it was not till August 1641 
 that the Scottish Commissioners were able to turn their faces 
 homeward with a new and favourable treaty in their pockets. 
 But their long residence in London was not without advantage 
 to their country. Three of them were ministers — Henderson, 
 Blair, and Baillie — who all preached frequently, crowds attending 
 them just as they did Irving and Chalmers in later days. These 
 men became intimately acquainted with the Puritan leaders, and 
 thus in many respects paved the way for the intercourse which 
 took place in the years that followed. 
 
 2. Oliver Cromwell. — These years were stirring ones in the 
 history of England. Charles and his Parliament came to an 
 open rupture, issuing in civil war, and the conflict brought to the 
 front Oliver Cromwell, who first achieved a great reputation as 
 a military leader, and afterwards became virtual sovereign of the 
 country under the title of Lord Protector of the Commonwealth. 
 
 In the early stages of this struggle, the Scots were in hearty 
 sympathy with the English Parliament. The Solemn League 
 and Covenant, although first drawn up by Henderson, was 
 (in 1643) first adopted by an Assembly in which the English 
 and Scottish nations were alike represented ; and that famous 
 Westminster Assembly of Divines, to which we owe our Con- 
 fession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, was 
 not, as many imagine, a convocation of Scottish Presbyterians, 
 but a council of English Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and 
 
UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH. 65 
 
 Independents called together by the Long Parliament, and in 
 which certain Scottish Commissioners sat by special invitation 
 to give advice and assistance, but not to vote. As long as 
 this Assembly was sitting — from 1643 to 1649— the relations of 
 England and Scotland were most intimate and friendly. In the 
 beginning of the latter year, however, signs of a breach appeared. 
 Charles, with whom all along the quarrel had been, was no 
 longer alive to trouble them, and the pressing question came to 
 be, Who should be his successor ? To Cromwell that question 
 presented no difficulty. He was in principle a Republican, and 
 his idea was that the Government should go on as before with 
 the administration in the hands of the people. But the Scots 
 had no dislike to monarchy. They had a special interest in the 
 Stuart family as having sprung from among themselves. They 
 had also some reason to think personally well of the legitimate 
 heir to the throne. And so they no sooner heard of the execu- 
 tion of the King, than they proclaimed his son, Charles II., 
 his successor. The act brought them into collision with the 
 now powerful head of the English Commonwealth, who in 1650 
 marched an army of his Ironsides across the Tweed, defeated 
 the army gathered to oppose him at Dunbar, and ultimately 
 subjugated the whole country. Until the death of Cromwell, in 
 September 1658, Scotland lay helpless at the feet of a master 
 who exercised virtually despotic powers alike in civil and eccle- 
 siastical matters. But the despot was intelligent and benevolent. 
 He dissolved the General Assembly as summarily as he had 
 dismissed the Rump of the Long Parliament, and the two parties 
 in the Church, the Resolutioners and Protesters, were per- 
 emptorily restrained from tearing each other to pieces. But 
 there was no Prelacy heard of in his day. Lay patronage was 
 everywhere abolished, and no earnest minister was suffered to 
 be molested while he was engaged in any spiritual work. The 
 Lord Protector was an Independent in his Church principles, 
 and as such was very unacceptable to the Presbyterians. He 
 was a conqueror also, who was ruling the Scots against their 
 
66 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 will. But the time of the Commonwealth in Scotland was at 
 once materially and religiously a time of unusual prosperity ; and 
 now that the soreness which it caused is completely healed, we 
 may allow ourselves to think of it with, on the whole, grateful 
 satisfaction. 
 
 3. Abolition of Episcopacy. — We have glanced but lightly over 
 this period, — from 1638 to 1658 — from the Glasgow Assembly to 
 the death of Cromwell, — but these twenty years mark an extra- 
 ordinary era in the history of our island. The Imperialism of 
 the Court provoked a violent reaction alike in Church and State, 
 and Prelacy and Monarchy came for a season to be in equal 
 disrepute. The Scottish Presbyterian leaders must have felt like 
 men that dreamed when, in place of requiring to maintain a 
 defensive attitude against England, they were invited by the 
 rulers of that country to join with them in maturing plans for 
 establishing one evangelical Church to which both nations might 
 adhere. Events in those days proceeded with startling rapidity. 
 In 1637, Episcopacy was the recognised form of Church govern- 
 ment in Scotland, and the only question debated was as to 
 whether the sovereign will of Archbishop Laud in regard to a 
 new service book was to be obeyed or not. Six years later, not 
 only was Episcopacy displaced in Scotland, but a Bill had passed 
 the English House of Lords ordaining that after the 5th 
 November 1643 there should be no archbishops, bishops, etc., 
 in that country ; that all their titles should cease, determine, and 
 become utterly void ; and that their possessions should return to 
 the King. The Westminster Assembly was convoked to fill in 
 a right way the void that had thus been caused ; and it is a 
 remarkable circumstance, that as the Scotch Commissioners, 
 though present only as assessors, contributed materially to the 
 framing of the documents prepared, so their country has been 
 impressed most deeply and enduringly by its proceedings. Few 
 Englishmen know that the Jerusalem Chamber was the place 
 in which the Standards of the Presbyterian Churches were 
 
UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH. 67 
 
 elaborated ; or realize that the Shorter Catechism framed there 
 is to this day the religious text-book of our schools, and the Con- 
 fession of Faith the test of the orlhodoxy of our ministers. 
 
 4. What gave Scotland its Influence. — It was owing in part to 
 the peculiarities of the political situation that Scotland was 
 allowed and enabled to take the influential part it did in the 
 direction of affairs in these days. But the power it exercised 
 was due also to its being represented by men of remarkable 
 ability. Argyle, Loudon, Johnston of Warriston, among the 
 laity, were well able to hold their own even with the astutest 
 members of the Long Parliament ; and in no age has the Church 
 had leaders of greater learning, piety, and power than Henderson, 
 Rutherford, and Gillespie. 
 
 5. Samuel Rutherford. — Regarding Rutherford, Dr. Walker 
 writes : ' It is not easy to find any one in Church history to 
 compare with this remarkable man (though I have sometimes 
 thought of Bernard of Clairvaux), — a man of power, I may say 
 of genius, — fresh, bold, penetrating, to whom no subject came 
 amiss, teeming with intellectual energy, distinguished for his 
 learning, but never cumbered by it ; the greatest scholastic of 
 our Presbyterian Church, and yet, we are told, the plain and 
 faithful teacher, — the fiercest of Church leaders, and the most 
 devout of saints. — equally at home among the tomes of Aquinas, 
 and writing letters to a poor congregation.' ' Rutherford's 
 letters/ Dr. Walker adds, ' are so far as I know the only letters, 
 two centuries old, which are still a practical reality in the 
 religious life of Scotland, England, and America.' 
 
 6. George Gillespie. — c The name (we again quote Dr. Walker) 
 you most naturally conjoin with Rutherford's is that of his 
 younger contemporary, George Gillespie. He was but a stripling 
 when he entered the field of authorship, in his work on the 
 English Popish ceremonies. You do not wonder at the im- 
 
68 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 pression made. With an entire self-composure, the youthful 
 theologian debates the points at issue with the great writers 
 opposed to him. The whole literature of the subject seems to 
 be at his call. I do not suppose that from the pen of so young 
 a man there has ever appeared in our country a work of more 
 consummate learning.' 
 
 7. Alexander Henderson. — Henderson was more of a statesman 
 than a theologian — at least, he was too much involved in active 
 work to find time for literary composition. But the estimation 
 in which he was held by his contemporaries was extraordinary. 
 Baillie, in describing to a friend consultations held before the 
 Assembly of 1638, writes that there was but one opinion about 
 his fitness for the Moderatorship — the only question was as to 
 whether he could be spared from the floor of the house. ' We 
 were somewhat in suspense,' he says, ' about Mr. Henderson, — he 
 was incomparably the ablest man of us all for all things, — but 
 we expected then much dispute with the bishops and Aberdeen 
 doctors, and we thought our loss great and hazardous to tyne 
 [lose] our chief champion by making him a judge of the parties.' 
 He was appointed notwithstanding, and earned for himself in 
 the office golden opinions. In the Westminster Assembly his 
 counsels were equally weighty ; and when he was at last taken 
 away, he was lamented as one who had rendered to the Church 
 of Scotland services which were second in importance only to 
 those of Knox. He died in 1648. Rutherford lived till 1661, 
 — long enough to see the Restoration, to join with Blair in 
 a vain endeavour to keep Sharp out of the University of St. 
 Andrews, and to hear of his great book, the Lex Rex, being 
 burnt by the common hangman. If his summons to a higher 
 court had not come then, his ending would not have been so 
 peaceful as it was. He -was one of those whose continuance in 
 existence was reckoned intolerable by the flatterers oi" Charles, 
 and while he was dying he was called to Edinburgh to answer 
 to an accusation of high treason. The citation happily came 
 
UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH. 69 
 
 too late. Before he could respond to it, he was ' where few 
 kings and great folk come.' 
 
 8. State of Religion. — It has been said that the time of the 
 Commonwealth was a time of spiritual prosperity in Scotland. 
 On this point the testimony of Kirkton is most explicit. He 
 admits that the dissensions of the two parties in the Church — 
 the Resolutioners and the Protesters (the former representing 
 the Broad School of the day, the latter the section that was 
 more rigid) — did no little harm ; ' yet,' he says, ' were all these 
 losses inconsiderable in regard of the great success the word 
 preached had in sanctifying the people of the nation ; and I 
 verily believe there were more souls converted to Christ in that 
 short period of time than in any season since the Reformation. 
 Nor was there ever greater purity and plenty of the means of 
 grace. Ministers were painful ; people were diligent. So, truly, 
 religion was at that time in very good case, and the Lord 
 present in Scotland, though in a cloud.' 
 
 1. To what in importance has the Glasgozu Assembly been likened? 
 
 2. When did the Long Parliament begin to sit ? 
 
 3. What interest has England in the Solemn League and Covenant, 
 
 and in our Confession and Catechisms ? 
 
 4. Mention some of the great events which occurred about this time. 
 
 5. Name some of the Scotchmen who took a prominent part in the 
 
 public affairs of the period. 
 
 6. What was the state of religion tinder the Commonwealth ? 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE PERSECUTING TIMES. 
 
 Oliver Cromwell was succeeded in the Protectorate by his 
 son Richard — a man of very inferior ability, and one quite 
 incapable of carrying on the Government which his father had 
 established. A change of some kind, therefore, was speedily 
 seen to be inevitable ; and the old question began to pass from 
 lip to lip : ' Why speak ye not a word of bringing the King back 
 again?' The interest felt by the Scots in Charles II. was, of 
 course, natural enough. He was of their own kith and kin. But 
 they had had some experience of him when he came across from 
 Holland, after his father's death, to measure swords with Crom- 
 well. He had then manifested a perfect readiness to sign any 
 number of Covenants, and had been crowned at Scone as a 
 Presbyterian ; but he had convinced all the discerning men who 
 came into contact with him that he was utterly destitute of 
 seriousness and sincerity. And they might have hesitated now, 
 in the remembrance of that, to rush thoughtlessly into his arms. 
 But the infatuation of the time was upon them. There came a 
 reaction from Puritanism, just as, twenty years before, there had 
 been a reaction from Imperialism. The King was asked to 
 come and take his own again ; and in no part of the kingdom 
 was his return hailed with more enthusiasm than in the most 
 ancient portion of his dominion. 
 
 I. The Restoration and its Immediate Consequences. — The Resto- 
 ration took place in 1660; and within a year the Scots learned 
 that if Cromwell had chastised them with rods, it was the 
 
THE PERSECUTING TIMES. 7 I 
 
 purpose of his successor to chastise them with scorpions. The 
 King was settled without conditions. It is true that an effort 
 was made, both before he left Breda and after his return to 
 London, to move him to consider favourably the wishes of his 
 Scottish subjects in regard to ecclesiastical matters ; but these 
 negotiations were committed to the conduct of Mr. James Sharp, 
 who looked mainly after his own interest ; and apart from that, 
 it is humiliating to read of the attitude which our country-folk 
 assumed in their intercourse with the ruler whom they had called 
 back from his exile. Instead of maintaining an independent 
 position, and boldly naming terms to him, they waited meekly 
 and almost timidly to learn what good it was going to please him 
 to grant to them. 
 
 Nor had they long to wait. 'In the latter end of March,' writes 
 Mr. W. Row in his Life of Blair, 'the Parliament did rescind all 
 the Acts approving the National Covenant, the Solemn League 
 and Covenant, and the abolishing of bishops in Scotland ; and 
 they rescinded all Acts for Presbyterian government, yea, all 
 Parliaments since 1637, as wanting lawful authority — only 
 tolerating Presbyterian government during the King's pleasure.' 
 
 A wet sponge was thus applied to a most remarkable episode 
 in British history. The Glasgow and Westminster Assemblies, 
 Cromwell and the Long Parliament, the Confession of Faith, the 
 Solemn League and Covenant, were all blotted out at one sweep 
 from the page of history. Scotland was to be dealt with as if 
 for twenty years it had been dreaming, and the thread of its 
 history was taken up at the point where the dream began. Of 
 course, the King very soon spoke out more explicitly about the 
 government of the Church. The Presbyterian system, which was 
 to be tolerated during his pleasure, was summarily set aside on 
 the 6th of September, when the obsequious Scottish Council 
 ordained the Lyon King-at-Arms ' to pass to the Market Cross, 
 and make publication of his Majesty's pleasure for restoring the 
 Kirk to the right government of bishops, and to require all his 
 subjects to compose themselves to a cheerful acquiescence and 
 
72 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 obedience to the same . . . commanding all, if they find any 
 failing in their obedience thereto, or doing anything to the con- 
 trary, that they commit them to prison till the Council give 
 further orders.' 'This,' says Row, 'was looked upon as the 
 saddest proclamation that had been in Scotland these twenty- 
 five years bypast, overturning all that had been done these years, 
 by the setting up of archbishops, bishops, etc.; and that not, as 
 his grandfather, by Church judicatories, though corrupted, and 
 by several steps and degrees, but per saZ/um, and that by his sole 
 power and authority, by virtue of his supremacy, or rather 
 because it was his pleasure so to do.' 
 
 2. A New Episcopate.— Of the old set of bishops only one 
 remained, and it was necessary to reorganize the order. This 
 was done by sending four men to London to receive consecration 
 from the English Episcopate ; and when the new prelates entered 
 Edinburgh wearing the blushing honours which had been con- 
 ferred upon them in Westminster Abbey, the Scottish Parliament 
 passed Acts restoring to them all their ancient prerogatives, 
 temporal and spiritual, reimposing patronage and Episcopal 
 ordination, and requiring all persons occupying places of trust 
 to take an oath abjuring the Covenants. 
 
 3. Archbishop Sharp. — The leader in this new raid upon Pres- 
 byterianism was James Sharp. He was, to begin with, minister 
 of Crail ; and as he showed himself to be a man of affairs, he 
 was selected by his Church to represent it at the Court of 
 Charles II. during the formative period of the Restoration. Pro- 
 fessor Flint condescends to be the apologist of this man, and 
 maintains that his character was much less black than his con- 
 temporaries believed it to be. 'Sharp's decision,' he says, 1 'to 
 abandon Presbyterianism was only made after Presbytery had 
 been disestablished by the Scottish Parliament.' He only left 
 the ship when it was certainly sinking. He uas not a man 
 
 J St. Giles'' Lectures, 1st scries, p. 203. 
 
THE PERSECUTING TIMES. 73 
 
 to be morally admired, but he was not a moral monster. And 
 so on. It is one of the amiable characteristics of the present 
 age, this attempt to hold the balances perfectly even, and 
 to show that there were good points in the worst of men. But 
 we question greatly whether it can serve any wholesome end 
 to attempt to palliate the conduct of Archbishop Sharp. Nobody 
 believes that Judas joined the company of Christ's disciples with 
 the deliberate purpose to betray Him ; and nobody thinks ot 
 Sharp as a traitor from the outset. But no twisting of history 
 can hide the fact that he was employed by Presbyterians for 
 the preservation of Presbyterianism — that he saw how things 
 were drifting, and did his best to prevent the Church from taking 
 all possible means to arrest the current, — and that in the end he 
 was base enough to accept a reward for accomplishing what he 
 had been commissioned to oppose. In no other connection could 
 a man act so dishonourably and have honourable men speaking 
 for him. And in the present instance it specially grates upon one 
 to hear a Presbyterian minister apologizing for Sharp when his 
 after conduct to his countrymen and brethren is remembered. 
 No one will excuse his assassination. It was a blunder as well 
 as a crime. But the circumstance of its occurrence has a 
 significance which no criticism will ever overpower. The 
 popular instinct is not in the least likely to have been mis- 
 taken. Such aversion as Sharp awakened was not produced by 
 a merely morally weak man who had the misfortune to be 
 misunderstood. 
 
 4. Archbishop Leighton. — Another of the new bishops was 
 Leighton, a very different man. He was the son of a Dr. 
 Alexander Leighton whom the Long Parliament found in prison 
 suffering from the tender mercies ot Archbishop Laud. When 
 the record of these sufferings was read, — he had had his ears 
 cut off, and was hardly able to crawl, — sobs of grief and indigna- 
 tion were heard all over the hall. But the younger Leighton 
 bore no malice against a system which, in certain hands, had 
 
74 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 proved so cruel. To him it seemed that questions about Church 
 government were matters of minor moment. He had attained 
 to a strong faith in the central verities of the Christian religion, 
 and in the hope that his countrymen might be induced to think 
 of these only and let other things drift, he lent himself to the 
 execution of a scheme which, in his mind, was to be a moderate 
 Episcopacy, but was so tolerant as that practically nobody 
 was to be disturbed. As might have been expected, he soon 
 discovered that he had been cherishing the dream of a 
 Utopia. The imperiousness of his own colleagues on the 
 one hand, and the obstinacy of the Presbyterians on the 
 other, rendered the realization of his conception absolutely 
 impossible, and in the end he retired to the south of Eng- 
 land and closed his days peacefully as a parish rector. 
 
 5. The Old Presbyters. — In the meantime a further step was 
 taken to bring about uniformity. The proclamation of the 
 Council pointed only to what was to be done in the future. 
 But here was a problem handed down from the past : What 
 was to be the position of the ministers already in possession 
 of the benefices ? To meet this case, it was decreed, ' That 
 all kirks planted since 1649 should be declared vacant, unless 
 [their present occupiers] be presented by the patrons, and 
 get collation from the prelates before the 20th of September. 1 
 ' The pretext was,' says Row, ' because the Parliament of 
 1649 abolished patronages, putting the power in the hands 
 of the people and Presbytery ; and so they judged these 
 ministers, admitted by Presbyteries but not presented by 
 patrons, to have been illegally entered.' The 20th of September 
 came and went, and no such signs appeared of obedience to 
 the Act as seemed to hold out the prospect that the Church 
 would be thoroughly Episcopized. Hence the Commissioner, 
 with a quorum of the Secret Council, took it upon him to 
 issue a new and more imperative edict on the 1st of October. 
 The edict ran thus : ' Whereas there was an Act of Parliament 
 
THE PERSECUTING TIMES. 75 
 
 ordaining ministers entered since 1649 t0 obtain presentations 
 to their benefices from their patrons and collations from their 
 respective bishops betwixt the date of the said Act and the 
 20th of September, otherwise their kirks to be declared vacant, 
 etc. Yet, notwithstanding, many ministers ordained since 1649 
 continue, since the 20th of September, to exercise the duties of 
 their callings, they having neglected to get presentations from 
 their patrons and collations from their bishops, — all which 
 ministers are discharged any longer to exercise any part of 
 their ministerial callings, and all hearers and others discharged 
 to acknowledge them as their ministers, and all heritors and 
 others discharged to pay them any part of this year's stipend ; 
 and they and their families are commanded to remove out of 
 their parishes and presbyteries betwixt the date hereof and the 
 1st of November.' 
 
 It was felt, after this harsh measure was published, that it 
 was too hasty in its requirements, and the time of grace was 
 extended to February 1663 ; but there was no relaxation in 
 its demands, and the result was that nearly 400 ministers were 
 ejected from their charges, and cast for their support on the 
 freewill offerings of their people. This might not have been 
 an unmitigated evil if the ejected clergy and their sympathizers 
 had been let alone. But the idea of tolerating a nonconforming 
 body outside the Establishment was not entertained for a moment. 
 There now began an internecine struggle between the Govern- 
 ment for supremacy and the people for liberty ; and the conflict 
 ended only with the overthrow of the Stuart Dynasty. 
 
 6. The Instruments of Persecution. — Had it been possible to 
 compel conformity among such a people as the Scots at this 
 time were, the means used for that end must have been suc- 
 cessful. The Government of the Restoration gave from the 
 first unmistakable proofs of its being possessed of a cruel 
 and unscrupulous energy. It had given warnings to the 
 nobles and clergy alike by striking at Argyle and Guthrie, 
 
76 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 and bringing them both to the block ; and it had shown itself 
 to be not afraid of discontent, by keeping on the even tenor 
 of its way in spite of the secession of two thousand ministers 
 in one day in England. What made it pursue its tyrannical 
 course with such confidence for so long a time, was perhaps 
 the circumstance that it was able to secure such suitable 
 agents. During the earlier years of the persecuting times the 
 machinery of repression was directed by men who were believed 
 by the people to be under some demoniacal influence. Three of 
 them were renegades — Sharp, Rothes, and Lauderdale. To one — 
 Sharp — sufficient reference has already been made. Another, the 
 Earl of Lauderdale, sat as Lord Maitland in the Jerusalem 
 Chamber as one of the Scotch Commissioners to the West- 
 minster Assembly. He came into Middleton's place as Secretary 
 of State for Scotland, and till 1680 superintended the various 
 measures which were taken to force upon the people the blessing 
 of Episcopacy. These men found willing and worthy tools. 
 First, there was Sir James Turner, who won his spurs in the 
 Thirty Years' War. ' How terrible a curse he must have been to 
 the people,' says Hill Burton, 'can be better understood from 
 the dry detail of an official report than from all the vehement 
 and eloquent denunciations that have been heaped upon him by 
 the sufferers and their sympathizers.' The time came when Sir 
 James ceased to be on the sunny side of the hedge. His conduct 
 became the subject of investigation by the Privy Council, and 
 among the charges brought against him were these : — 1. Exact- 
 ing quartering money for more soldiers than were actually 
 present ; 2. Fining such as lived orderly ; 3. Fining for whole 
 years preceding his coming into the country ; 4. Fining one that 
 lay a year bedfast ; 5. Taking away cattle, etc. But Sir James 
 was a courteous knight compared with General Thomas Dalzicl. 
 1 HeJ says Hill Burton, 'had served abroad, and of all the foreign 
 adventurers who had brought evil ways from foreign institutions 
 and practices, he had brought home the largest stock of ferocity 
 and rapacity. Others had chiefly served in the centre of Europe, 
 
THE PERSECUTING TIMES. 77 
 
 and in the Thirty Years' War. They had learned enough of evil 
 there ; but Dalziel had been doing the work of the barbarous 
 Muscovite far off at the back of Europe.' Bitterly, however, as 
 Turner and Dalziel came to be hated, the feelings they excited 
 were moderate as compared with those which were subsequently 
 called forth by James Graham of Claverhouse. A halo of 
 romance has been thrown around him. Pie has been represented 
 by the novelist as essentially a gallant soldier, with but a dash of 
 the dare-devil in him. But the instincts of a whole people are 
 not to be disregarded. He had not the excuse to plead of a 
 Muscovite training. He was a Scotchman born and bred, and 
 the record of his cold-blooded cruelties sends a shudder through 
 us even yet. 
 
 Think of a defenceless people given up to be ridden over 
 rough-shod by such men as Turner, Dalziel, and Claverhouse, 
 while others like Sharp, and Rothes, and Lauderdale, and 
 Mackenzie directed their operations. We may wonder that they 
 did not succeed in the end in compelling conformity, but we 
 cannot very much wonder that the Scottish nation has never 
 since been very much in love with Prelacy. 
 
 7. Persecuting Methods. — It is too long a story to tell in detail 
 here, but the general course and character of the events of the 
 period can be easily described. The problem to be solved was 
 how to compel all to accept the State religion, and the methods 
 followed were such as the following : — 
 
 Here was a parish of which the minister was a man in the 
 prime of life. He had been ordained in 1650, on the unanimous 
 call of the people, and ever since he had laboured among them 
 so zealously and faithfully as to be universally respected and 
 beloved. But the decree of the Council came directing him on 
 pain of ejection to secure the consent of his bishop and his 
 patron to his continuance in office, and he felt himself shut up to 
 one course. He had studied in St. Andrews, under Rutherford 
 and Baillie, and had drunk in their teaching about the spirituality 
 
78 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 of the Church and the scripturalness of Presbytery, and he could 
 not conscientiously retain his living on the conditions named. 
 In the winter of 1662-63, therefore, he left his manse and set out 
 with his young family to seek a place where he might rest till 
 the blast was over. No sooner was he gone than his place was 
 filled by one of those young men from the north whom Burnet 
 describes as the worst preachers he ever heard, as ignorant to a 
 reproach, and as being many of them openly vicious. Under 
 these circumstances the parish church was of course deserted. 
 The whole people, from the laird downward, either stayed at 
 home, trying to edify one another, or travelled to a neighbouring 
 church, the incumbent of which was an Evangelical, and whose 
 settlement had taken place before the critical year of 1649. But 
 this state of things was not tolerated long. The curate com- 
 plained to the authorities in Edinburgh that his ministrations 
 were not being taken advantage of, and a troop of dragoons was 
 sent to the spot to enforce conformity. This was done in a 
 vigorous way. When the Sabbath came round the military 
 commandant appeared at the church door with a list of the 
 parishioners in his hand. The absentees were then noted and 
 duly called upon the same evening or next day to give an account 
 of themselves. If any were without excuse, fines were imposed, 
 and soldiers quartered upon the offenders till these were paid. 
 In this way cruel wrongs were often inflicted. Families who 
 refused to submit were ruined, and the number came to be 
 steadily increased of people without a home wandering in a state 
 of destitution over the country. The poor people bore all this, 
 however, and sharper measures required to be tried. A species 
 of Inquisition, called the High Commission Court, was estab- 
 lished for the express purpose of suppressing all dissent. It was 
 made penal for any of the outed ministers to preach anywhere,— 
 even in a barn ; and imprisonment, torture, and banishment were 
 resorted to when milder means proved ineffectual. 
 
 8. Battle of the Peutlands.— That all this could not go on in* 
 
THE PERSECUTING TIMES. 79 
 
 definitely without provoking an emeute, was to have been anti- 
 cipated. The first outburst took place in 1666, when four 
 countrymen interfered to prevent some soldiers from cruelly 
 ill-treating an old man who had fallen into their hands. The 
 two parties came to blows. The fire so kindled spread, and the 
 result was a rising which at one time appeared threatening enough 
 to alarm the capital. In the end, however, it proved to be merely 
 a flash in the pan. The army which the Covenanters mustered 
 was found to be neither sufficiently numerous nor sufficiently well 
 armed to stand against the well-trained forces of the Govern- 
 ment. A serious defeat was sustained by it, on the 28th 
 November, at Rullion Green, on the Pentlands. And the re- 
 bellion, as it was called, was made the excuse for the exercise 
 of greater severity than ever. The prisoners taken on the occa- 
 sion were treated shamefully, and the thumbscrew and boot, the 
 favourite instruments of torture used by the Scottish Inquisition, 
 were freely employed to force suspected persons to reveal what 
 they knew or did not know about the rising. Among those who 
 suffered legal murder at this time, was Hugh M'Kail, whose 
 speech on the scaffold in the Grassmarket sent a thrill through 
 those who heard it which, we may say, has continued to be felt 
 by others to this hour. 
 
 9. Reign of Terror. — So far, however, the severities served their 
 end. A reign of terror was established which for a time pro- 
 duced a delightful amount of conformity. ' All the people,' says 
 Burnet, l were struck with such terror that they came regularly 
 to church, and the clergy were so delighted with it that they 
 used to speak of that time as the poets do of the golden age.' 
 
 One can imagine the shame and indignation with which this 
 spiritual despotism was submitted to. Certain measures of 
 relief came in 1667, when an Act of Indemnity was passed for the 
 Pentland rising. But no religious toleration was granted ; and 
 things got back very much into their old condition again, when, 
 in June 1668, the life of Sharp was attempted in the streets of 
 
80 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 Edinburgh. The bullet missed its mark, but the archbishop 
 took his revenge on the would-be assassin, who was not found 
 at the time, by worrying anew the party to which he was 
 assumed to belong. It by and by came to be clearly seen, 
 however, that if an end was to be put to the disorder which 
 still continued, the natural leaders of the people — the ministers 
 — would need to be dealt with ; and as the story developes, one 
 can see that the political movements of the time were more 
 and more directed to their suppression. The first device re- 
 sorted to in that connection was a very cunning one. An Act of 
 Indulgence was passed allowing certain of their number to return 
 on specified conditions to their parishes. The conditions did 
 not look very hard, and some were tempted to comply with them. 
 But the majority reckoned the offer a snare, and the effect of 
 the arrangement was to drive a wedge into the mass, which 
 for years after produced heartburnings and divisions. 
 
 10. The Blinks. — Those who refused the Indulgence were not 
 silenced. In the face of all warnings many of them continued 
 to preach, — sometimes in private houses, sometimes in the fields, 
 — and in spite of fines and imprisonments people would go to 
 hear them. To meet this state of things conventicles were for- 
 mally proscribed, and laws were passed making attendance on 
 them treason, and officiating at them a capital offence. Never- 
 theless, field preaching became commoner than ever, and be- 
 tween 1669 and 1679 tne extraordinary spectacle was presented 
 of a large portion of the nation meeting Sabbath after Sabbath 
 for worship in open defiance of the law. Because of this very 
 strain upon their feelings, their attention to religion grew to 
 be intense. When men listened to a minister who was risking 
 his life to preach to them, and when they saw on the rising 
 grounds around, sentinels watching for the approach of enemies 
 before whom they themselves might fall, they could not but give 
 unusual heed to the word spoken. The result was that deep 
 impressions were often made, and that that decade was ever 
 
THE PERSECUTING TIMES. 8 I 
 
 afterwards remembered as a time of blessing and revival. It 
 was the season of The Blinks, as they were called. Between the 
 severities which followed the rising of the Pentlands and ' the 
 killing times ' which succeeded the assassination of Sharp, there 
 came bursts of sunshine ; and although the sky was every now 
 and again obscured by clouds, some of them dark enough, the 
 suffering Church received gracious visitations of the Spirit, which 
 at once compensated it for its actual trials, and prepared it for 
 the furnace through which it was to be called to pass. Many 
 strange tales are told of this time. We read of the communion 
 being observed in the fields. We hear of troopers coming to 
 kill, being arrested by the word, and remaining to pray. We are 
 told of conventicles meeting under the very eye of the enemy. 
 In short, such a state of things existed as we can account for 
 only by supposing that it was then as it had been with the 
 Apostolic Church, when fear came upon every soul, and un- 
 believers were unconsciously restrained from mischief by the 
 mighty hand of God. 
 
 ii. Murder of Sharp. — But 'The Blinks,' which had been be- 
 coming fewer and fainter, finally disappeared in May 1679, when 
 Archbishop Sharp was met on Magus Muir, and deliberately 
 murdered. The incident filled the innocent breasts of the 
 authorities with unutterable moral indignation. They had them- 
 selves caused the death of hundreds of innocent persons, and the 
 cruelties they had inflicted on multitudes more had been simply 
 frightful ; but then they had ' the law ' on their side. ' The law,' 
 to be sure, was of their own making, and it was an outrage on 
 justice. Still it was ' the law,' and they acted according to its 
 forms. Sharp, on the other hand, was stricken down by a band 
 of men who held no legal warrant from them, — and the crime 
 they committed filled them with a nameless horror. We can 
 look calmly at all the acts of that time now, — and no one seeks 
 to justify the tragedy of Magus Muir. But we have come 
 thoroughly to understand that there are such things as ' legal 
 
82 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 murders ; ' and there are few Scotchmen who are not prepared 
 to affirm that the crime of Hackston of Rathillet (if he really 
 was the guilty man) was infinitely less horrible than that which 
 his judges committed when they ordered him to be dealt with 
 in the manner following : — 
 
 ' His right hand was first struck off, and a little after, his left, 
 which he endured with great constancy and firmness. He was 
 next drawn up to the top of the gallows by a pulley, and was 
 suffered to fall down a very considerable way upon the lower 
 scaffold three times with his whole weight. Then he was fixed 
 at the top of the gallows, and the executioner, with a large knife, 
 cutting open his breast, pulled out his heart before he was dead ; 
 for it moved when it fell on the scaffold. He then stuck his 
 knife in it, showed it on all sides to the people, saying, Here 
 is the heart of a traitor. At last he threw it in a fire prepared 
 for the purpose, and, having quartered his body, his head was 
 fixed on the Netherbow, one of his quarters, with his hands, at 
 St. Andrews, another at Glasgow, a third at Leith, and a 
 fourth at Burntisland.' 
 
 A party of enthusiasts, led away by a momentary impulse, may 
 kill a tyrant and not be ruffians. But is it conceivable that the 
 barbarities we have described could have been committed in 
 cold blood by men in the position of judges, if they had not been 
 worse in heart than the murderers whom they condemned ? 
 
 Anyhow, the assassination was certainly a blunder. The 
 persecution broke out in a fiercer form than ever ; and very 
 many lives were, directly and indirectly, lost in consequence. 
 A new test came into use in connection with it. Men and 
 women were asked if they thought the slaying of Sharp was 
 1 murder? If they said A r o, or hesitated, they were immediately 
 proceeded against ; and punishments of the severest kind were 
 inflicted on people for their thoughts. 
 
 These oppressions, again, evoked a dangerous spirit in the 
 country. Field meetings continued to be held, and those who 
 attended them came armed. New views also began to be taken 
 
THE PERSECUTING TIMES. 5 3 
 
 of the nature of civil government. Hitherto all the people had 
 stood loyally by the King — denying, indeed, his right to direct 
 them in religious matters, but acknowledging his claim to their 
 submission in all civil concerns. The wearing oppressions, 
 however, to which they had been subjected, led some of them 
 to doubt whether he could be the ruler to whom God meant 
 them to give submission ; and they came to the conclusion 
 that, as he was persecuting the Church of God and wasting it, 
 he should be disowned. A bitterer spirit than before thus came 
 to be infused into the struggle, and out of the misunderstandings 
 thereby engendered much trouble arose. It needed now but a 
 spark to set the country in a blaze, and the spark was kindled 
 on June I, 1679, at Drumclog. An attempt made there by 
 Claverhouse to break up an armed conventicle led to his own 
 defeat ; and his defeat brought on the unfortunate battle of 
 Bothwell Bridge. 
 
 12. Bothwell Bridge. — In that engagement the Covenanting 
 cause was miserably mismanaged ; but we forget the unwisdom 
 of its leaders in the atrocities with which the conquerors disgraced 
 their victory. An immense number of prisoners was taken, and 
 of these twelve hundred were huddled into Greyfriars Church- 
 yard, where, with no covering but that of the canopy of heaven, 
 they were kept for five long months. At the end of that time 
 those who survived were dispersed in various directions — two 
 hundred and fifty of them being sent away to spend the remainder 
 of their lives as slaves in the West Indies. Happily, perhaps, for 
 the larger number of these, they never reached their destination. 
 The vessel in which they sailed was wrecked on the Orkney 
 coast, and all save a few perished. Of this wretched remainder, 
 two or three lived to come home again at "the Revolution ; and 
 one wonders what they thought. The crime for which they had 
 suffered so dreadfully was that of striking a blow for liberty to 
 worship God according to their consciences. Did they come 
 to believe that they had been punished righteously, or were 
 
84 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 they still of opinion, after all that had come and gone, 
 that those were no criminals who fought at Bothwell and 
 Drumclog ? 
 
 13. The Killing Times.— But the effects of the rising were not 
 felt only by those who took part in it. The ' Killing Times ' now 
 came in earnest. Not men only, but women also, and even 
 children, became the victims of a persecution which was at once 
 savage and relentless. The story of John Brown of Priesthill, 
 shot down by Claverhouse like a dog, has fascinated the readers 
 of the history. But there are other incidents quite as horrible. 
 And as we think of them, the wonder grows that the excuse 
 sought was not actually furnished— to give up all Scotland to 
 military rapine. The Duke of York is said to have given it 
 as his opinion that there never would be peace till all the 
 country south of the Forth was turned into a hunting field ; 
 and if the Scottish people had not been restrained by con- 
 siderations of religion, it is more than likely that they would 
 have really provoked a war of extermination. 
 
 14. The Society Men. — The Covenanting spirit was now most 
 visibly represented by the Society Men — by men who had 
 adopted the principle that the King was no longer entitled 
 to their allegiance. These men — Cargill, Cameron, Renwick, 
 etc. — lived like outlaws, as in fact they were ; preaching as 
 they could find opportunity, and keeping alive in different 
 localities the spark of independence. Upon many others the 
 terror of the times fell, and they were quiet and silent for very 
 fear. But nothing could daunt the spirit of those later wit- 
 nesses, to whom we are certainly indebted for keeping the flag 
 fl)ing when otherwise it would have gone down. 
 
 15. Accession of James VII. — Charles II. died in February 
 1685, and was succeeded by his brother James, a Roman 
 Catholic. The new King was no better at heart than his pre- 
 
THE PERSECUTING TIMES. 85 
 
 decessor, and at first the change brought no relief to the 
 Presbyterians of Scotland. But in course of time he found 
 it convenient to issue edicts for the toleration of Nonconformists. 
 He himself was a dissenter from the Established religion, and 
 his proceedings were viewed with the greatest jealousy and 
 suspicion. To meet his own case, therefore, he conceded all 
 over the kingdom liberty of worship, within certain restrictions, 
 and most of the sufferers in Scotland took advantage of the 
 indulgence. The Cameronians, indeed, — as the Society Men 
 were called, — refused to accept a boon which they regarded 
 as incomplete, and as coming from a polluted source. But 
 the majority were glad of rest on any condition, and thus a 
 measure of peace came even before the Revolution. 
 
 16. The Burden of the Guilt. — It would be unreasonable to 
 charge the persecutions of this period upon Prelacy as a system. 
 If Charles had been a Papist or a Mohammedan, and had held 
 the principles he did, his imperialism would have found an out- 
 gate through other channels. What is conspicuous in this era is 
 the intolerance of Erastianism — the assertion of the right of 
 rulers to hold the Church in subjection, and to force conformity 
 to the religion which they profess. At the same time, we cannot 
 forget that the representatives of the Prelacy of the period lent 
 their power and influence to support the tyranny of the Govern- 
 ment ; and, in the absence of any very general expression of 
 sorrow for the part played by the bishops, we may well be 
 excused for not thinking to this day very kindly of Scottish 
 Episcopacy. It is not the pleasantest reminiscence which we 
 have of Leighton, that his father's son condescended to be the 
 colleague of Sharp. In matters of Church government, indeed, 
 he was himself a latitudinarian. He preferred a moderate Epis- 
 copacy, but he could tolerate Presbyterianism without a pang. 
 And that very fact renders his concurrence in the attempt to 
 force new forms upon the Scottish people peculiarly gratuitous. 
 The son of a Puritan martyr, therefore, might have had, to say 
 
86 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 the least of it, a greater respect for the proprieties than to throw 
 the shield of his name over a scheme of oppression. And in the 
 same line we add, that there is something radically amiss with 
 those who can allow themselves to talk with admiration of the 
 chivalry of Claverhouse, while they see nothing but a sour and 
 half-insane fanaticism in the faith and independence of Renwick 
 or Cargill. 
 
 1. Who succeeded Oliver Cromwell 1 ? 
 
 2. Did the Scots acquiesce in the English arrangements? 
 
 3. Give the date of the Restoration. 
 
 4. What great mistake did the Scots make in bringing the King back ? 
 
 5. How did Charles deal 7vith the Scottish Church ? 
 
 6. In what respect was his cojiduct unpreccdentcdly bad ? 
 
 7. How was the new Episcopate set up? 
 
 8. Describe the men selected for bishops. 
 
 9. What was asked of the Presbyters ordained after 1649 ? 
 
 10. How many refused to assent? 
 
 11. What was the consequence? 
 
 12. Name the chief agents in the persecution, and describe thcit 
 
 character. 
 
 13. What methods were followed to co7tipcl uniformity ? 
 
 14. When and where did the first rising take place ? 
 
 15. What was the consequence of it ? 
 
 16. How did the indulgences tell? 
 
 17. What were ' The Blinks'*? 
 
 18. Tell the story of Sharp's mttrder, and the results. 
 
 19. Give the dates of the battles of Drum clog and Bothnvell Bridge. 
 
 20. What became of the prisoners? 
 
 21. What new doctrine about kings did the persecutions give rise to ? 
 
 22. On whom lies the guilt of the Killing Times ? 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE REVOLUTION ESTABLISHMENT. 
 
 ALTHOUGH King James for his own ends assumed, to begin with, 
 a tolerant attitude, it was soon seen that he was politically as 
 pure an absolutist as his brother had been ; and he was a very- 
 much more dangerous man, in this respect, that he was a religious 
 fanatic, and was prepared even to risk his crown in the endea- 
 vour to reconnect England with the Papacy. As his plans 
 became developed, it grew more and more evident that he 
 proposed to play the different provinces of his kingdom against 
 one another. A Scotch army was to be used to keep down 
 discontent in England. Scotland was threatened with an 
 invasion of caterans from Ireland. And so many insidious steps 
 were taken toward breaking down the Protestant interest, and 
 repressing constitutional freedom, that patriotic men in all parts 
 of the country took serious alarm, and entered upon a course 
 which, if it had not ended in success, would have been treated as 
 treasonable, and brought some of them to the block. 
 
 I. The Prince of Orange. — James' eldest daughter Mary had 
 married William Prince of Orange, a man of great ability, and a 
 conspicuous professor of the Reformed Faith. Until the alleged 
 birth of an English prince in 1687, Mary was the heir pre- 
 sumptive to the throne. And it was natural enough that she and 
 her husband should have been consulted when there seemed a 
 danger of the inheritance to which they were looking forward 
 being lost through the recklessness of its immediate possessor. 
 
 With the appearance of a male heir, this title to be regarded as 
 
 s? 
 
88 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 parties became less manifest ; but it was suspected that there 
 was imposition connected with the birth, and in any case the 
 crisis was too serious to admit of excessive attention being paid 
 to the claims of a sentimental legitimacy. Negotiations, there- 
 fore, went on as before between Holland and the revolutionary 
 party in England, and at last the hour for striking appeared to 
 have come. The Prince of Orange crossed the Channel with an 
 army, and landed at Torbay on the 5th November 1688. For a 
 month afterwards it continued doubtful whether there would be 
 civil war — King James remaining during that time in London, 
 engaged in consultations as to how the revolution was to be 
 met. Proofs, however, accumulated upon him that his crown was 
 lost, and he resolved to seek safety in flight. 
 
 2. Fall of the Dynasty. — ' On the 10th of December,' writes 
 Bishop Burnet, who had himself come over with William from 
 the Hague, ' about three in the morning, he went away in disguise 
 with Sir Edward Hales, whose servant he seemed to be. They 
 passed the river, and flung the Great Seal into it, which was 
 some months after found by a fisherman near Vauxhall. The 
 King went down to a miserable fisher-boat that Hales had pro- 
 vided for carrying them over to France. Thus a great King, who 
 had a good army and a strong fleet, did choose rather to abandon 
 all than either expose himself to any danger with that part of the 
 army that was still firm to him, or to stay and see the issue of a 
 Parliament. Some put this mean and unaccountable resolution 
 on a want of courage. Others thought it was the effect of an ill 
 conscience, and of some black thing under which he could not 
 now support himself.' 
 
 Whatever was the explanation, thus ignominiously fell the 
 Stuart Dynasty, never to rise again. And if the hill-folk in 
 Scotland had been moved by a vengeful spirit, they might have 
 felt a grim satisfaction in picturing to themselves this last of a 
 persecuting race seeking safety for himself in a foreign country, 
 and hiding his kingly person under the disguise of a servant. 
 
THE REVOLUTION ESTABLISHMENT. 89 
 
 William established his authority in Scotland without a great 
 deal of difficulty. A section of the nobles opposed him ; the 
 bishops and Episcopal clergy were in general on the Jacobite 
 side ; and the Highlanders under Claverhouse (now Viscount 
 Dundee) made a wild attempt to conserve the old order of things. 
 But an iron hand was now put forth which steadily and firmly 
 put down all opposition ; and what really perplexed the new 
 King most, was how to compose the ecclesiastical disorders 
 which had been produced by the misrule of the previous six- 
 and-twenty years. 
 
 3. The Scotch Bishops. — If we may believe Bishop Wordsworth 
 of St. Andrews, it was more by accident than anything else 
 that the Presbyterian Establishment was restored. If the 
 bishops of that day had only shown a little more worldly 
 wisdom, they would, it seems, have got for their Church all 
 that they could reasonably have desired. Here is the story of 
 how the tide came to be lost : — Dr. Alexander Rose, Bishop 
 of Edinburgh, went up to London to have an interview with 
 the new Sovereign, and William received him with the greatest 
 kindness. On separating, the latter expressed l a hope that 
 the Scotch bishops would be ki?id to him, a?id follow the 
 example of Engla7id? A great opportunity was thus opened 
 up to the Scotch Commissioner. If he had only had the sense 
 and presence of mind to drink of 'the cup of goodwill and 
 mutual support,' which was now ' unreservedly presented ' to 
 his lips by the Prince of Orange, the consequence might 
 have been that the Episcopal Establishment would have been 
 left undisturbed. But Dr. Rose unfortunately made a reply 
 which, though it sounds as if it did him infinite credit, was, 
 in Dr. Wordsworth's opinion, in the last degree injudicious. 
 
 'Sir, 1 said the Bishop of Edinburgh, 'I will serve you as 
 far as law, reason, and conscience shall allow me.' Such an 
 answer reads like one which John Knox or Andrew Melville 
 might have given ; and if we had met it in their histories, we 
 
9-0 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 should probably have admired it greatly. But the very recollec- 
 tion of it is highly provocative to the Bishop of St. Andrews. 
 ' At this,' says he, ' the Prince not unnaturally broke off the 
 conversation and turned himself away ! ' 
 
 ' Had the answer,' he goes on to say, ' been such as William 
 had looked for, and might naturally have expected^ there is good 
 reason for supposing that Episcopacy in this country might 
 have retained its hold, and that Scotland would have been 
 Episcopalian at the present day. ' 
 
 Now, to what extent the policy of William was affected by 
 the attitude of the bishops we do not pretend to be able to 
 say. That it was affected in a measure is certain. The Prince 
 of Orange was not likely to be drawn very cordially toward 
 men who, just two days before he landed at Torbay, could 
 write to King James as follows. After speaking of him as 
 ' the darling of heaven,' and as having been ' miraculously 
 prospered with glory and victory,' they say': 'We are amazed 
 to hear of the danger of an invasion from Holland, which 
 excites our prayers for an universal repentance from all orders 
 of men that God may yet spare His people, preserve your royal 
 person, and give such success to your Majesty's arms that all 
 who invade your Majesty's just and undoubted rights may be 
 disappointed and clothed with shame ; so that on your royal 
 head the crown may flourish.' 
 
 A document like that, with which William was no doubt made 
 acquainted, was likely enough to be considered when the question 
 of a policy came to be the subject of debate ; and if the Prince 
 interpreted Dr. Rose's innocent-looking sentence as an intimation 
 that the Scottish Episcopate meant to continue the friends of 
 James, he is assuredly not to be blamed in viewing them with 
 distrust. 
 
 How far this behaviour of the bishops, however, determined the 
 character of the new ecclesiastical establishment, is a question 
 which is not so easily answered ; and Dr. Wordsworth goes very 
 far indeed beyond the record, when he assumes that there were 
 
THE REVOLUTION ESTABLISHMENT. 9 I 
 
 no considerations but the petulance of Dr. Rose which influ- 
 enced so astute a statesman as the Prince of Orange in coming 
 to the conclusions which he reached. 
 
 4. A Possible Episcopal Establishment. — The truth is — and we say 
 it emphatically — that if William had resolved to follow in the line 
 of the Restoration, and had continued to give all the countenance 
 of the State to the Episcopacy which the Stuarts had set up, 
 not only would he and his immediate successors have found the 
 government of Scotland a more difficult business than they did, 
 but the Scottish Episcopal Church would itself have been made 
 to occupy, in the eye of the world, a very much less reputable 
 position than it does at this present hour. 
 
 We do not dwell on the political consequences of having 
 not merely the Highlanders, but the Covenanters in opposi- 
 tion. What is of more interest to us here, is the question what 
 would have been the religious and ecclesiastical effect of such 
 an arrangement as Dr. Wordsworth conceives to have been 
 possible. 
 
 If Dr. Rose, he says, had only been wiser, ' Scotland might 
 have been Episcopalian at the present day.' 
 
 Suppose that that had come true — in what estimation, we 
 ask, would an Episcopal Established Church have been held 
 which had had such a history? We sometimes meet, even 
 yet, with large assertions as to the number of people in Scotland 
 who at the Revolution were to be found contentedly waiting 
 on the ministrations of the curates. If a plebiscite of the 
 inhabitants had been taken then, perhaps (it is suggested) 
 the vote might have been for the maintenance of things as 
 they were. Perhaps it might. The thing at least is not 
 absolutely inconceivable. But can it ever be forgotten how 
 such a thing had come to be possible? For six-and-twenty 
 years, that is, for nearly a whole generation, the country had 
 lain under the heel of the oppressor. By the operation of cruel 
 laws, enforced with remorseless rigour, the natural leaders of 
 
92 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 the people had been either exterminated or banished. Four 
 hundred of the nine hundred who composed the ministry of 
 the Church at the Restoration were driven from their parishes, 
 and their places filled by men who (their own friends being the 
 witnesses) were ill qualified to keep alive the sparks of spiritual 
 life. The population of Scotland was not then a third of what 
 it is now, yet to secure for Prelacy even such a footing as it had 
 in 1688, the blood of eighteen thousand persons required to be 
 shed. Under circumstances like these, the marvel is not that 
 Presbyterianism, but that religion itself, survived. And if, when 
 all was done and a new order of things was being introduced, a 
 fresh establishment of the Episcopal Church had taken place, a 
 moral enormity would have been committed, under which that 
 Church itself would in the long run have sunk. 
 
 Scottish Episcopacy may or may not be now an object of 
 respect to the Scottish people (it will always be difficult for us 
 to forget the crimes which were done in its name), but Scottish 
 Episcopacy, such as Bishop Wordsworth would have had con- 
 tinued among us, would have been a system whose history no 
 honourable Episcopalian could have read without shame. The 
 seldomer, indeed, that they recall the fact that their Church was 
 once established, the more hopeful will be their own prospects. 
 Their progress must proceed from what they possess of present 
 light and truth, not from the inspiring influence of their tradi- 
 tions. Prelacy was never chosen freely by the Scottish people. 
 Whenever it was introduced, it was thrust upon them by secular 
 authority. Once and again it was cast out, as intolerable, by 
 popular uprisings, — showing always how the current tended to 
 flow, when it was left to take its own course. And if at the 
 Revolution the country had been really dragooned, as the Bishop 
 of St. Andrews believes it was, into submitting to the system 
 quietly, we can only say that the fact is a disgraceful one, which 
 no Christian Church could take the benefit of, and hope to 
 prosper. It would have been a practical embodiment and 
 exhibition of iniquity rewarded. 
 
THE REVOLUTION ESTABLISHMENT. 93 
 
 5. Principal Carstares. — William was just as able as we are now 
 to take a conjunct view of all the circumstances ; and we may 
 depend upon it, it was not merely the inconsiderate speech of 
 Dr. Rose which determined him to pursue the line of policy 
 which he took. 
 
 It was fortunate for him that he had at this juncture an 
 adviser who was very well acquainted with Scottish affairs. 
 This was William Carstares, afterwards Principal of the Uni- 
 versity of Edinburgh, — whose life and times have been de- 
 scribed in a very able and interesting way by Dr. Story of 
 Rosneath. 
 
 The father of the Principal was minister of the Cathedral 
 Church, Glasgow, when the restoration of Charles II. took 
 place, and he was one of the four hundred who were ejected 
 from their parishes in 1662, when the Act was passed requiring 
 submission to the bishops. John Carstares, the outed minister, 
 led a fugitive life ever after, and as one of the consequences, 
 his son William was sent for his education, not to any of the 
 Scotch Universities, but to Utrecht in Holland. It was while he 
 was there as a student that he was first introduced to the Prince 
 of Orange. The two men took to one another. In course of 
 time Carstares became one of William's chaplains, and it was 
 he who proposed and conducted the thanksgiving service which 
 the Dutch army of invasion engaged in when it first mustered 
 on the shores of England. 
 
 In Dr. Story's opinion, William's policy was regulated by 
 purely selfish considerations, and he thinks it quite possible 
 that he might have committed the fatal mistake into which Dr. 
 W T ordsworth regrets now he did not fall, if it had not been for 
 the fuller knowledge and wiser counsels of Carstares. 
 
 1 To William,' he says, ' at Whitehall, Scotch Presbyterianism 
 did not appear so potent an element in national life as to 
 William at the Hague. During the twenty-eight years of its 
 enforced suppression, Presbytery had undeniably dwindled in 
 numbers and in influence. William, who was a Broad Church- 
 
94 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 man, or Ci Latitudinarian ,; (as the phrase ran in his own day), 
 looked upon forms of Church government with indifference ; 
 and while prepared to tolerate all, was inclined to give the 
 sanction of national establishment to those only which were 
 upheld by supporters of his own authority. A thorough Erastian, 
 he would yield no recognition to dogmatic or hierarchic preten- 
 sions, which were advanced by the avowed opponents of his 
 Government and policy. While tolerating all sections of the 
 Church, he would help to establish that one, and that only, 
 which he understood would be most in harmony with his own 
 Government and with the wishes of the people. He would not 
 maintain a Church hostile to himself. He would not impose 
 one hateful to the people. With these principles, the ecclesi- 
 astical settlement of Scotland perplexed him/ ' His finessing 
 with the Episcopalians,' Dr. Story goes on to say, ' must have 
 been disapproved by Carstares,' who warned him to ' beware of 
 the Episcopal party/ and who drew up a paper which he entitled 
 ' Hints to the King,' and in which he set forth cogent reasons 
 why he ought to look to the Presbyterians. Among the reasons 
 there given were these : That they (the Presbyterians) constituted 
 1 the great body of the nation,' — that they were almost to a man 
 in favour of the Revolution, — and that ' the Episcopal clergy in 
 Scotland, particularly the prelates, had been so accustomed 
 to warp their religious tenets with the political doctrines of 
 regal supremacy, passive obedience, and non-resistance, that it 
 would be inconsistent with the very end of his coming to con- 
 tinue Episcopacy upon its present footing in Scotland.' 
 
 These considerations prevailed, and under the Revolution 
 Settlement the Episcopacy, which had been so imperiously im- 
 posed by Charles, was set aside, and Presbytery established in 
 its room. 
 
 6. Reconstitution of Presbytery. — ' The first step towards the 
 reconstitution of the Presbyterian Establishment [we again 
 quote Dr. Story] was the abolition of the Act of 1669, which 
 
THE REVOLUTION ESTABLISHMENT. 95 
 
 had made the King supreme over all persons, and in all causes, 
 civil and ecclesiastical.' 
 
 The next was to restore the surviving ministers, about sixty, 
 who had been ejected for not conforming to Episcopacy after 
 the Restoration. 
 
 Then came the last and decisive measure which established 
 the Church on the basis of the Confession of Faith, and of 
 the Presbyterian polity as defined and secured by the Act of 
 1592. 
 
 Such were the leading points in the measure ; but many other 
 details followed, including the repeal of a long list of laws in 
 favour of Episcopacy, the legalizing of the ' Rabbling of the 
 Curates,' and the vesting of the government of the Church in the 
 surviving ministers of 1662. 
 
 It was not possible, however, to carry through such a trans- 
 formation in the then condition of Scotland in a perfectly satis- 
 factory manner. William himself was an Erastian, as we have 
 heard, and although he had more sense and breadth of mind 
 than Charles, he had just as little respect for the Church as a 
 divine institution ; and although it would be most ungrateful to 
 forget our obligations to Carstares, his biographer makes it very 
 plain that he was not a man of the stamp of Melville and Hen- 
 derson. The air of Holland and of the Court had broadened him, 
 and he was able to make light of difficulties which would have 
 seemed insuperable to his persecuted father. In such hands a 
 policy of compromise was sure to be pursued. 
 
 At the same time, it must be admitted that, with the materials 
 to be manipulated, there could have been no hope of anything 
 like a peaceful arrangement, if an attempt had been made to con- 
 struct an ideally perfect Establishment. A statesman of a later 
 age might perhaps have thought of cutting the knot which it was 
 so difficult to untie. He might have suggested the disendowing 
 of all the sects, and the leaving of each to make its own way in 
 the world. But that was an idea which, we are sure, occurred 
 then to no one. And in contemplating a readjustment on a 
 
g6 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 national basis, we are not surprised that it was deemed necessary 
 to make concessions which are now known to have had mis- 
 chievous consequences. 
 
 For example, no notice was taken of those Covenants to the 
 inspiring influence of which Scotland owed in those days the 
 preservation of her liberties. 
 
 Then, how much there is of fatal significance in this account 
 of Carstares' attitude towards the Episcopal clergy and toward 
 patronage ! 
 
 'He dreaded,' says M'Cormick, 'the consequences which 
 might ensue from entrusting the whole government of the Church 
 and the disposal of the benefices in the hands of a set of men 
 who were tainted with all the prejudices of the people, and at 
 the same time irritated by a sense of recent injuries. While he 
 advised, therefore, the establishment of Presbytery, he was of 
 opinion that it ought to be of the most moderate kind, and so 
 modelled as to admit of the assumption of such of the Episcopal 
 clergy as took the oaths of Government upon the mildest terms. 
 This he foresaw would not be the case unless the rights of 
 patrons were preserved as a check upon the clergy.' 
 
 In conformity with these views, a middle measure was adopted 
 in regard to patronage. The voice of the people was recognised 
 as a potential element in the settlement of ministers, but the 
 right of nomination was conferred on the heritors and elders ; 
 while as to the curates, so easy a place of repentance was made 
 for them, that a considerable number found no difficulty in 
 remaining in their parishes after the Revolution as Presbyterian 
 ministers. 
 
 7. Rabbling the Curates. — Reference has been made to the 
 ' Rabbling of the Curates.' This is how the action of the populace 
 is described when, in at least 200 parishes, the inhabitants took 
 the law into their own hands at the Revolution, and summarily 
 dismissed the Episcopal ministers who had been intruded upon 
 them. Dr. Wordsworth is shocked at the levity with which Dr. 
 
THE REVOLUTION ESTABLISHMENT. 97 
 
 Story comments on these outrages. They occurred in the 
 winter. They were inflicted on clergymen who had been 
 ordained by bishops. The poor men were driven out of their 
 homes with their wives and children, and ' often without the 
 means of shelter and of livelihood.' And in the eye of the 
 Bishop of St. Andrews, their wrongs were equal to those of the 
 hunted Covenanter. Dr. Story has no patience with this abuse 
 of sentiment and of history. 'Never,' says he, 'were enormous 
 wrongs so leniently retaliated. Never in the day when power 
 had passed from the oppressors to the oppressed, was the 
 oppression so lightly revenged.' 
 
 The conduct of the rabble is, of course, not to be justified. 
 Men have no business to take the law into their own hands. 
 But when Episcopalians in these times are showing a revived 
 inclination to ' bleat and whimper ' over incidents which speak at 
 once for the suppressed indignation of the people during the 
 continuance of the prelatic regime, and for their self-command 
 when it came to an end, they would do well to listen to the 
 remonstrance of an English contemporary writer who had 
 personally examined into the whole matter of Presbyterian 
 persecutions, and who writes as follows : — 
 
 ' I would advise the gentlemen that talk of this as part of the 
 persecutions they complain of, to leave it out of the list, and let 
 it lie as an accident of the Revolution, and as an effect of the 
 rage of a provoked people, in which religion had no share. . . . 
 If they did not pistol in cold blood ; if they did not tie women to 
 stakes in the sea and let the tide flow over them ; if they did not 
 drag you out of your houses and shoot you without giving you 
 time to commend your souls to God's mercy, — if these things 
 were not done, you ought to believe that none of the posterity of 
 these poor innocents that so suffered were alive to revenge them, 
 or that you had more mercy from their hands than you had 
 reason to expect.' 
 
 Such a style of arguing will have no effect on minds like that 
 of Dr. Wordsworth. He deliberately contends that the opposi- 
 
98 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 tion of the Covenanters to Prelacy was probably ' more offen- 
 sive to God than the commission of cruelty and persecution /' 
 and to him, therefore, the expulsion of the curates seems a 
 supreme act of sacrilege. But common sense will assert itself 
 in defiance of priestly pretensions, and few intelligent laymen, 
 even of the Episcopal communion, will have much difficulty in 
 excusing this lawless but natural uprising of the people. 
 
 8. Weak Indulgence. —Apart from the rabbling of the curates, 
 the Presbyterians were indulgent to the verge of indifference. 
 Whether they were cowed by the persecutions to which they 
 had been subjected, or whether the strength of William's iron 
 hand was made so sensible as to overpower all thought of 
 opposition, certain it is that they lay almost passive in the 
 hands of the Government and its advisers, and submitted with 
 scarcely a struggle to whatever arrangement was considered to 
 be for their good. So far from the Prelatists, after the Revolu- 
 tion, having cause to complain that toleration was not extended 
 to them, the author of the old pamphlet x to which reference has 
 been made, and who is shrewdly suspected to have been no other 
 than Defoe himself, says: 'By the Act of 1695, it was taken 
 quite out of the power of the Church to depose any man merely 
 for being Episcopal in principle, or for refusing to own the 
 Presbyterian Church. Nay, the Episcopal clergy, who by 
 virtue of this Act remain in their livings many of them to 
 this day, refuse to acknowledge the Church, to submit to 
 any of her judicatories, or to join either in discipline or worship. 
 And yet in all their affronts of the Established Church they 
 continue in their parishes preaching and using all their forma- 
 lities, however contrary to the inclinations and desires of the 
 people, who i?i some places are fain to set tip meeting-houses in 
 their parishes, and be at the charge of entertaining a Presbyterian 
 minister as a Dissenter to preach to them, because they cannot 
 bear the fopperies and opposition of their parish minister? 
 1 Presbyterian Persecution Examined, etc. 
 
THE REVOLUTION ESTABLISHMENT. 99 
 
 9. The Revolution Church. — The Church of the Revolution, then, 
 was in no sense a very strong one. Its ministry was composed, 
 first, of sixty elderly men, the survivors of the ejectment of 1662 ; 
 second, of more than a hundred others who had been ordained after- 
 wards, but who had many of them conformed in various ways to 
 the prelatic system ; third, of the three preachers who had been 
 ministering among the hill-folk or extreme Covenanters ; and 
 lastly, of the curates who were found willing to submit to the 
 new order of things. The Presbyterian element was the 
 strongest in this variously compounded body, because its repre- 
 sentatives had most principle, and had the countenance, besides, 
 at once of the masses and of the State. But it was easy to predict 
 that nothing but a miracle could make its course peaceful and 
 prosperous. If in the earlier Assemblies it showed itself honestly 
 desirous of benefiting the country, it was unmistakably timid 
 in the execution of its plans ; and not many years had passed 
 before that Moderate party began to take shape from which not 
 much good has come to Scotland. 
 
 Its chief sources of danger were within. But outside also 
 there were various things which bore a threatening aspect. It 
 may be a question whether the Cameronians did not serve a 
 better purpose by standing aloof than they would have done by 
 conforming. If they had allowed themselves to be absorbed, 
 they might soon have been assimilated. In any case, though 
 they insisted on fighting under their own flag, we cannot think 
 of them but as friends of the Church. It was different, however, 
 with the Papists, who had increased in number and influence 
 under James (some of the leading Scottish politicians having 
 become perverts), — and with the Prelatists, who in certain 
 localities constituted the mass of the people. These received 
 support from many of the landowners ; and as they were mainly 
 Jacobites praying secretly for the Pretender over the water, they 
 proved a disturbing element in the country, not merely religiously, 
 but politically. We frankly admit that we do not see very 
 clearly how those who had the making of the time could have 
 
100 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 done very differently from what they did. But let us distinctly 
 understand where the blame of the complications of that age 
 properly lies. To get at the spring of the evil we must go back 
 to the Restoration, and to the unprincipled counsels of the 
 founder of modern Scottish Episcopacy — Archbishop Sharp. 
 We have often to make the best of things when they have got so 
 hopelessly ravelled that they cannot be put perfectly to rights ; 
 but in submitting to what has become a necessity, it may be 
 both lawful and right to remember who is responsible for having 
 brought us into trouble. If Scotland had been left in 1660 to 
 follow its own light instead of having Prelacy thrust upon it, 
 its history would have been very different from what it became. 
 
 1. /;/ what respects were Charles and James like and unlike each 
 
 other ? 
 
 2. What claim had William to the throne ? 
 
 3. When did the Prince of Orange land in England ? 
 
 4. What became of the King? 
 
 5. How did the Bishops act ? 
 
 6. What might have happened if they had been more prudent ? 
 
 7. In what light would an Episcopal Establishment have appeared 
 
 to posterity ? 
 
 8. Who was Carstares ? 
 
 9. Describe his character. 
 
 10. For what are we indebted to him ? 
 
 1 1. State the steps taken in reconstituting Presbytery. 
 
 12. Can the rabbling of the curates be excused? 
 
 13. Wherein lay the weakness of the Revolution Establishment ? 
 
 1 4. Describe the state of things in Scotland after the Settlement. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE SECESSIONS. 
 
 The first event which affected seriously the position of the 
 Church after the Revolution was the Union of England and 
 Scotland, in 1707. For several years previously that consumma- 
 tion was foreshadowed ; and in various Acts of Assembly passed 
 about that time, one can trace symptoms showing that what was 
 coming was regarded with apprehension. Though the King 
 and the politicians of the period ignored the Covenants, these 
 were not quite forgotten by the Church, and their influence is 
 visible in the anxiety displayed for the revival of spiritual 
 religion and for the preservation of the Presbyterian form of 
 government. The importance of such an incident, therefore, 
 as the suppression of the Scottish Parliament could not be 
 overlooked, and if the advantages of the proposed measure were 
 admitted, its disadvantages were also recognised to an extent 
 which made its acceptance by the more earnest Churchmen by 
 no means cordial. 
 
 1. The Good and Evil of the Union. — We can now see still more 
 clearly the good of the Union and the evil of it. It took away 
 from Jacobitism much of its power to do mischief. It increased 
 the material prosperity of Scotland. It made the government of 
 the whole country easier and more orderly. But, on the other 
 hand, it deprived the Scottish nation of much of its legitimate 
 influence in the regulation of its internal affairs, and it not 
 only drew to London our upper classes, but (by the operation 
 of the sacramental test and otherwise) led to that abandon- 
 
 101 
 
102 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 meat by them of their own national Church, which is to this 
 hour one of the most perilous and unsatisfactory of our social 
 characteristics. 
 
 The strength of the anxiety felt about the possible evil of the 
 Union is revealed in the care which was taken to secure the 
 liberties of the Church. 
 
 An Act of Security was passed by which the Confession of 
 Faith and the Presbyterian form of Church government were 
 ratified and established 'to continue without any alteration to 
 the people of this land in all succeeding generations ; ' and it 
 was further declared that this Act of Security, ' with the estab- 
 lishment therein contained, shall be held and observed in all 
 time coming as a fundamental and essential condition of any 
 treaty of Union to be concluded betwixt the two kingdoms, 
 without any alteration thereof or derogation thereto in any sort 
 for ever.' 
 
 The Articles of Union as ultimately adopted included these 
 conditions, and the Scottish Church made a fresh start under 
 the new regime, carrying with her the comfortable assurance 
 that she was as safe from encroachment on the side of England 
 as the most stringent statute law could make her. 
 
 2. Restoration of Patronage. — It was really a devout imagina- 
 tion to suppose that any such bonds could be binding for all 
 time. A nation must lay its account with changing somewhat 
 in the course of centuries, and it was an unreasonable assump- 
 tion to make, that the Revolution Establishment was so perfect 
 as to be incapable of improvement ( in any sort for ever.' But 
 while that may be conceded, it would be difficult to find terms 
 strong enough to denounce, as it deserves, the shameful breach 
 of faith of which the English Parliament was guilty, when in 
 1 7 12 — just five years after it had become solemnly bound to 
 let the Scottish Church alone— it summarily, and in the face of 
 earnest remonstrances from all parties in the Church, set aside 
 the Act of Security, and restored lay patronage. 
 
THE SECESSIONS. I03 
 
 It Is difficult to account for this apparently gratuitous assault 
 upon the Scottish Church, but by supposing that it was an out- 
 come of one of the political plots of the period. It is certain 
 that at this time the party in power in England had strong 
 Jacobite leanings ; and the measure may have been intended to 
 serve Jacobite ends. It seems rather an extreme idea to suggest 
 that they hoped to break up the Union by showing how utterly 
 valueless were its securities. But it is not unlikely that they 
 had it in their heart to weaken the influence of the Presbyterian 
 Church by making it less popular in its constitution, and bringing 
 it more under aristocratic control. 
 
 What moved them to aim at that object was not merely that 
 the Church was politically opposed to them, but that they wished 
 to give an impulse to the Episcopal party, on whose active 
 partisanship they could depend. The Act of Toleration, which 
 was passed in 171 1, is one with whose provisions we cannot but 
 now agree. It allowed nonconforming congregations to estab- 
 lish themselves anywhere, and to use the Anglican Liturgy if 
 they pleased. It also exempted their members from submission 
 to the Presbyterian judicatories. But while the new laws were 
 in themselves unobjectionable, they were straws showing how the 
 winds were blowing. 'The Church,' says Dr. Story, 'had, even 
 long before the Union, dreaded that those who sought to under- 
 mine her would make a joint attack through toleration and the 
 restoration of patronage ; nor did the Episcopal and Jacobite 
 party pretend to hide their designs of undoing that portion of 
 the treaty which solemnly secured the perpetual establishment of 
 the Presbyterian Church.' Carstares saw through their designs 
 more clearly, perhaps, than any one else, and his doing so ex- 
 plains what has puzzled those who claim him as the founder of 
 the Moderate party, that, latitudinarian though he was, he led the 
 opposition both against the Act of Toleration and the restoration 
 of patronage. 
 
 3. The Consequences.— The unprincipled conduct of the British 
 
104 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 Parliament in 1712 was historically parallel to that of Charles 
 II. in 1660. The latter imperiously imposed upon the Scottish 
 Church a form of government at which it revolted. The former, 
 in an equally imperious way, imposed upon it a system which 
 was intensely distasteful to it, and in open defiance of its 
 formal and solemn protests. What happened as the result 
 of the restoration of Episcopacy has been told in the story 
 of the persecutions. What followed from the restoration of 
 patronage was the breaking up of the Church into innumerable 
 fragments. 
 
 At first Queen Anne's Act was almost a dead letter. For the 
 settlement of a minister in a parish, there were needed, not 
 merely the patron's presentation, but the call of the people and 
 the concurrence of the presbytery of the bounds, and for some 
 time — so unpopular was the new arrangement — few probationers 
 would accept a patron's nomination. But some astute land- 
 owners began to make capital out of this excessive conscien- 
 tiousness. When a vacancy occurred, they named in connection 
 with it men who they knew would not accept their invitation, 
 and time was thus lost to their own material gain. For although 
 the parishes were left unsupplied with ordinances, the patrons 
 appropriated the stipend. The Church could not see such a state 
 of things continued, and it interfered. But it was little it could 
 do to rectify the great wrong which had been committed. 
 Petitions to Parliament — protests in the Assembly — deputations 
 to London, were all resorted to in vain. Patronage was re- 
 stored, and it had to be submitted to. And so, after a good 
 deal of exclamation and struggling, things were allowed, so far 
 as formal ecclesiastical action was concerned, to settle down. 
 
 What happened in consequence is well known. Patrons 
 became bolder in the exercise of their 'rights.' Probationers 
 grew to be less scrupulous in accepting appointments. And before 
 the middle of the century, it had come to be recognised by the 
 majority as an indisputably wise practical policy to give full 
 effect to every legally drawn presentation at all hazards. Such 
 
THE SECESSIONS. I05 
 
 a consummation was not reached, of course, without friction. 
 The people could not anywhere see the ' call ' set aside without 
 dissatisfaction. And many a presbytery must have winced 
 under the operations of the Riding Committees, and the still 
 more tyrannical law of the Assembly, which left them no indi- 
 vidual liberty in cases of the most unwarrantable intrusion. But 
 it is undeniable that the great mass of the ministry must have 
 acquiesced in this silent revolution, and the simple fact of such 
 an acquiescence — so speedy and so complete — goes a long way 
 to explain the secessions which began to take place within 
 twenty years after patronage had been restored. 
 
 4. Causes of the Separation. — The popular belief is that the 
 Erskines and Gillespie were driven out of the Church simply 
 because they came to adopt views which were regarded as in- 
 compatible with their position about the rights of the Christian 
 people. That was certainly one of the causes of their expulsion, 
 but it was by no means the only cause or the deepest cause. 
 The truth is, that the Church to begin with was constituted of 
 discordant elements, which could only have held together for 
 any considerable length of time if the comprehensionist prin- 
 ciple, which now prevents the Church of England from falling 
 to pieces, had been then known and allowed to operate. In 
 the Erskines one sees, under changed circumstances, the suc- 
 cessors of the Covenanters ; and their struggle, though not 
 against Prelacy enforced by the sabres of dragoons, was just 
 as truly for Presbytery and Liberty and Evangelism. Had 
 the Moderates, who very soon gained the ascendancy, been 
 as wise and temperate as their modern vindicators say they 
 were, they might, by the exercise of a very small amount 
 of tolerance, have at least delayed the catastrophe. New 
 wine and old may be kept in the same bottle, if the stopper 
 is judiciously removed. And if the representatives of the 
 ancient witnesses had only been left free to testify against 
 the corruptions which they saw around them, and to exempt 
 
106 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 themselves from personal complicity in acts which they con- 
 demned, the dissolution of the Revolution Establishment would 
 not have begun so early. But there seems to have been no 
 large-minded apprehension of the true character of the situation. 
 The two great ' schools ' of which the Church was composed 
 became conscious of their essential antagonism. The Evan- 
 gelicals were in a minority, but, confident in the goodness of 
 their cause, they were zealous and uncompromising. On the 
 other hand, the Moderates came to ascertain their numerical 
 strength. They were annoyed by the religious pretensions of 
 their opponents, which appeared to reflect upon themselves. 
 And being no doubt honestly persuaded that the policy of en- 
 couraging ' the democracy ' was an unwise one, they set about 
 such measures of repression as promised to issue in at least an 
 outward uniformity. In this attempt to give unity to the Church 
 they could not draw upon the secular arm, as their predecessors 
 had done, but they had considerable spiritual resources, and 
 these they employed, if not wisely, yet with vigour. 
 
 5. Questions of Doctrine. — The ' persecution ' which now began 
 was inaugurated by an attack upon the doctrine of the minority. 
 An English book, called The Marrow of Modern Divinity, was 
 reissued in Scotland by Mr. James Hog of Carnock, who wrote 
 for it a commendatory preface. The theology of the Book is 
 not different from that taught in our Standards, but the General 
 Assembly of 1720 was persuaded by Principal Haddow of St. 
 Andrews that it was unsound, and an Act was passed condemn- 
 ing its propagators, and placing the work in an Index Expur- 
 gatorius. These proceedings brought to the front twelve men, 
 among whom were Ebenezer Erskine and Thomas Boston, who 
 felt that the truth of God and the faith of the Church were con- 
 demned in their condemnation. They did what they could by 
 discussions and representations to have the matter set right, 
 but without a great deal of success. The Act, indeed, was 
 explained so far ; but the complainants were summoned for 
 
THE SECESSIONS. I07 
 
 their pains to appear at the bar of the Assembly, and to receive 
 there a solemn rebuke for their meddlesomeness, and for avowed 
 sympathy with 'heresy.' 
 
 6. Toleration on the Left. — While Evangelicalism was thus dealt 
 with so imperiously, a more notorious case showed how far 
 the Moderate party were prepared to go in tolerating aberra- 
 tions on the Left. Professor Simson of Glasgow was accused 
 of holding and teaching Arian doctrines ; yet it was with the 
 greatest difficulty that the Assembly could be induced to remove 
 him from his chair. This readiness to repress men of the type 
 of Boston and to shield men of the type of Simson, was signi- 
 ficant as a symptom of the time, and in it we are to see another 
 of the causes which forced on the collision. 
 
 7. Repression of the People. — No case of intrusion into a parish 
 against the will of the people took place till 1725. But soon 
 after that date such cases began to occur with increasing fre- 
 quency, — and here the fatal folly of the Moderate majority was 
 displayed in a way which inevitably precipitated the rupture 
 which was approaching. 
 
 That the people were intended to occupy a potential place 
 even under the Act of Queen Anne, is undeniable. They had 
 the right to adhibit or refuse to adhibit their names to a ' call.' 
 But the secularizing influence of patronage had now told, and 
 the leaders of the majority had arrived at the conclusion that 
 the call was a formality which might be disregarded. Every 
 presentee, therefore, was forced into the charge to which he was 
 nominated, whether the parishioners concurred or not ; and when 
 presbyteries happened to be recalcitrant, the Assembly took the 
 matter into its own hands and settled the objectionable man by 
 a committee of its own. 
 
 But this was not all. The authorities not only committed 
 these enormities, but refused to listen to any remonstrances. 
 A representation signed by forty ministers was addressed to 
 
108 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 the Assembly of 1732, but it was not even allowed to be read. 
 When Ebenezer Erskine preached before the Synod of Stirling a 
 sermon in which he proclaimed the need for reform, he was 
 sharply called to account. And on Erskine's refusing to submit 
 to a rebuke, he was first suspended, and then separated from 
 his charge. 
 
 8. Erskine and Gillespie. — It was this crowning act of tyranny 
 which led to the first Secession. Erskine was joined by three 
 other ministers — Fisher of Kinclaven, Wilson of Perth, and 
 Moncreiff of Abernethy — in protesting against the intolerance 
 of the Moderate majority. All the four, having elected to make 
 common cause together, were treated in the same manner. 
 Being driven, unjustifiably as all now believe, cut of the ministry, 
 they not unnaturally took the further step of going out of the 
 Church. On the 6th December 1733 they constituted themselves 
 into an Associated Presbytery ; and thus began to flow the little 
 runlet which has now swollen into a formidable flood. 
 
 For a time the parties who had brought about this catastrophe 
 were alarmed at the consequences of their policy, and they went 
 a very long way to make amends to the brethren whom they had 
 offended, in the hope of bringing them back. But when all their 
 efforts proved vain they desisted, and within a wonderfully short 
 period we find them not only following their old counsels, but 
 pursuing these more recklessly than ever. 
 
 A Riding Committee might not have been an admirable 
 institution in itself, but it was an immense convenience. When 
 a presbytery could not see its own way to induct an unaccept- 
 able presentee into a parish, it had only to roll the responsibility 
 over upon the Assembly, and that venerable court was always 
 able to find agents to do its work. The arrangement, however, 
 was not an orderly one ; and there is something to be said for 
 Principal Robertson, who seriously objected to it, and got the 
 Church to agree that each presbytery must be required to 
 transact its own business. But here again a fresh illustration 
 
THE SECESSIONS. IOQ 
 
 was furnished of the incurable viciousness of the system. Mr. 
 Gillespie of Carnock could not bring his mind to assent to the 
 settlement of Mr. Brown of Inverkeithing. In the days of the 
 Riding Committee the Presbytery of Dunfermline could have 
 managed without him. But Dr. Robertson's new rule had come 
 into force, and he could not be spared. Of the two alternatives 
 before him, he chose to obey his conscience rather than his 
 ecclesiastical superiors, and was deposed for contumacy. The 
 experience gave him a new view of patronage. It seemed 
 to him now a burden which no Church could bear and 
 prosper ; and though with a heart full of loyalty to the Church of 
 Scotland, he was driven to become the founder of another sect, 
 which indicated his attitude to succeeding generations by taking 
 to itself the name of the Relief Church. Thomas Boston, the 
 author of The Fourfold State, did not live long enough to take 
 part in either Secession ; but his son, who became minister of 
 Jedburgh, joined Mr. Gillespie, and they two with an elder 
 made the first Relief Presbytery. Mr. Gillespie was deposed in 
 1752. 
 
 These events may be very deplorable, but they are very 
 intelligible. In reading the life of Carstares, the real organizer 
 of the Revolution Church, one is struck with his sagacity and 
 fairmindedness. We repeat again what we have already said : 
 That if there was to be a national Establishment at all, the 
 Establishment constituted was the only one which could very 
 reasonably have been set up. But Carstares must have been a 
 very sanguine man indeed, if he believed that he had so adjusted 
 the elements which he found existing as to make a speedy 
 explosion improbable. These elements were kept for a time in a 
 state of quiescence by outward pressure ; but they could not 
 amalgamate, and they could not agree to differ. It is vain to 
 speculate what would have happened if the Covenanting section 
 of the Church had gained the ascendancy. What really took 
 place was, that the leaven prevailed which owed its origin to the 
 teaching of the curates. That, with the characteristic intolerance 
 
HO SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 of the time, made a breach inevitable. The Erskines and others 
 were happily not driven, as their fathers were, to the mountains 
 and moors. Liberty of worship, for which a past generation had 
 fought in vain, was now conceded fully. But the persecuting spirit 
 still lived in the tyrannical majority, which denied to conscien- 
 tious men even the relief of protest— and as a refuge from that 
 there was no resource but Secession. 
 
 1. What was the first important public event after the Revolution ? 
 
 2. Indicate the good and evil of it. 
 
 3. What steps were taken to secure the liberty of the Church ? 
 
 4. How was the Act of Security maintained ? 
 
 5. What was the Act of Toleration ? 
 
 6. What motives led to the restoration of Patronage ? 
 
 7. What is the popular view of the cause of the Secessions? 
 
 8. Hmv are they really to be accounted for ? 
 
 9. About what book did a difference of opinion arise ? 
 
 10. Who siipported and opposed it ? 
 
 11. In what direction zaas toleration shown ? 
 
 1 2. How were the people treated ? 
 
 13. Indicate the immediate causes of the Secessions. 
 
 14. Give the dates of both. 
 
 15. In what way may it be said that they were inevitable^ 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE ERA OF MODERATISM. 
 
 With the turn of the century there rose into notice a man who 
 at the time was only a country minister, but who for nearly thirty 
 years after 1752 ruled the Assembly with the authority of a 
 dictator. Principal Robertson was not the first of the Moderate 
 'leaders.' The era of 'Moderatism' began (Principal Tulloch 
 thinks) in 1720, and then Principal Haddow reigned. Dr. Robert- 
 son also had as his immediate predecessor Dr. Cuming, who 
 was a Moderate to all intents and purposes. But there are many 
 considerations which move us to date the period of which we 
 are now to speak from 1752. In the first place, for example, 
 between 1720 and the middle of the century, the conflict between 
 the two parties in the Church was waged with such vigour on 
 the one side and such hesitation on the other, that the question 
 who was to gain in the end was a matter of at least considerable 
 uncertainty. When the first Secession took place, in 1732, a 
 feeling of serious alarm sprang up, and so many concessions 
 were made to the Erskines and their friends, that it looked, for 
 a time, as if the Assembly were really altering its course, and 
 proposing to proceed on a new tack altogether. It by and by 
 recovered its spirits again, and went on as formerly ; but Dr. 
 Cuming himself was opposed to patronage, and was extremely 
 averse to putting upon scrupulous brethren, in connection with 
 disputed settlements, a heavier burden than they could bear. 
 
 Besides, for another thing, it was in 1742 that those remark- 
 able spiritual movements began, in Cambuslang and Kilsyth, 
 
 which brought Whitefield himself down to Scotland, and by 
 
 111 
 
112 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 which the whole Church must, in some degree, have been stirred. 
 Before the middle of the century was reached there had occurred 
 a subsidence of the tide. But it is difficult to realize that the 
 full triumph of Moderatism had been achieved while revivals like 
 these were in progress. 
 
 The crisis was reached when Mr. Robertson of Gladsmuir, 
 seconded by Mr. Home, the author of the tragedy of Douglas, 
 succeeded in persuading the Assembly to pay no heed either to 
 the popular will in connection with ministerial vacancies, or to 
 the conscientious scruples of presbyteries who had reclaiming 
 congregations to face. The law, it was now held, gave to 
 patrons the right to nominate whom they pleased to vacant cures, 
 and no man had any liberty save to give legal effect to their 
 presentations. 
 
 We shall learn something of the era which now began from 
 the character of its leading spirit. 
 
 I. Character of Robertson. — He was a man after Dean Stanley's 
 own heart. Personally he was most attractive, and although 
 'it is difficult for us, with the advances made since his time, 
 fully to comprehend what he did for history,' we can all 
 appreciate the fact that in his day he took a first place among 
 men of letters as the historian of Scotland, of America, and of 
 Charles V. 
 
 1 His first appearance,' says the Dean, 'was as a young minister 
 in the General Assembly, when he at once led them captive by 
 his eloquence. From that time for twenty years he remained its 
 complete master. His administration was remarkable as show- 
 ing how complete independence of worldly influence may be 
 combined with complete vindication of the superiority of law to 
 ecclesiastical caprices. He insisted on the same strictness in the 
 judicial proceedings of the Assembly as was observed in the 
 other courts of justice, and left behind him a series of decisions 
 which were long venerated as a kind of common law in Scotland. 
 
THE ERA OF MODERATlSM. 1 13 
 
 * He was also,' adds Dr. Stanley, ' as thorough a latitudinarian 
 as Leighton.' 
 
 The eloquent speech above referred to was the one which led 
 to the deposition of Mr. Gillespie of Carnock, and to the forma- 
 tion of the Relief Church ; and Dr. Robertson, in vindicating ' the 
 superiority of law to ecclesiastical caprices,' — that is, in giving 
 effect to all legal presentations at whatever hazard, — covered the 
 country with Secession meeting-houses. But if the Dean knew 
 these facts, he did not consider it material to make any mention 
 of them. Robertson's ' comprehensive grasp,' ' his learning,' ' his 
 dignity,' his influence as 'the mighty Churchman who ruled the 
 Church of Scotland as no one had done since the death of Car- 
 stares,' these are the things which filled the Dean's eye and stirred 
 his admiration. And he did not think it worth his while to turn 
 aside, even for a moment, to ask whether the policy which was the 
 outcome of them all had stood the test of time and of experience. 
 
 But there are others who have studied the character of Dr. 
 Robertson — looking at him from a different standpoint. Here, 
 for example, is how the great Scottish Churchman appeared to 
 William Wilberforce when he was taking his Practical View of 
 Christianity, Having in the text of his book expressed great regret 
 ' that many of the most eminent of the literati of modern times 
 have been professed unbelievers, and that others of them have 
 discovered such lukewarmness in the cause of Christ as to treat 
 with especial goodwill and attention and respect those men who, 
 by their avowed publications, were openly assailing or insidi- 
 ously undermining the very foundations of the Christian hope — 
 considering themselves as more closely united to them by litera- 
 ture than severed from them by the widest religious differences, 
 Wilberforce adds in a note : — ' It is with pain that the author 
 finds himself compelled to place so great a writer as Dr. Robert- 
 son in this [second] class. But to say nothing of his phlegmatic 
 account of the Reformation ... his letters to Mr. Gibbon, lately 
 published, cannot but excite emotions of regret and shame in 
 every sincere Christian.' 
 
 H 
 
114 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 Robertson, as we have heard, was ' a thorough latitudinarian, 
 and as ' toleration is a plant of easy growth in the soil of indiffer- 
 ence/ .he felt no difficulty in associating on the most intimate 
 terms with David Hume, or in speaking generously about all 
 differences in religious belief. But, if we are to credit Dr. 
 Carlyle of Inveresk, he took part in what looks like a conspiracy 
 to break down the manners of his time as well as the strictness 
 of its faith. ' There were a few of us,' says Dr. Carlyle, ' who, 
 besides the natural levity of youth and the natural freedom of 
 our manners, had an express design to throw contempt on that 
 vile species of hypocrisy which magnified an indecorum into a 
 crime, and gave an air of false sanctimony and Jesuitism to the 
 greatest part of the clergy, and was thereby pernicious to rational 
 religion.' The conspiracy so far succeeded. ' We freed the clergy 
 from many unreasonable and hypocritical restraints.' But there 
 were lengths to which the leaders of the Church dared not go. 
 Drs. Robertson and Blair, though they both visited the great 
 actress [Mrs. Siddons] in private, often regretted to me that they 
 had not seized the opportunity which was given them by her 
 superior talents and unexceptionable character of going openly 
 to the theatre, which would have put an end to all future animad- 
 versions on the subject.' 
 
 These notes may suffice to give some idea of the man. That 
 the religious side of his nature came out in a more attractive way 
 in his intercourse with confidential friends, we can scarcely doubt 
 when we remember what was said about him by his colleague, 
 Dr. Erskine. But looking at his public life and his policy as a 
 leader, it is plain that his influence must have been injurious in 
 many ways. 
 
 It was at a terrible cost to the Church that he l vindicated the 
 superiority of law to ecclesiastical caprices.' His own readiness 
 to make greater allowance for Hume and Gibbon than for the 
 Seceders, could not but have a relaxing effect on the faith of the 
 country. And although he did not actually set the fashion of 
 clerical attendance on the theatre, his confidential communica- 
 
THE ERA OF MODERATISM. 115 
 
 tions to Dr. Carlyle must have helped materially to the toleration 
 of freer modes of life. 
 
 Now the character of Robertson is reflected in his age. 
 
 2. Policy of Intrusion.— It was not all at once or without a 
 struggle that ' the ecclesiastical caprices ' of the Scottish people 
 suffered themselves to be repressed. When a vacancy occurred 
 in a parish, the inhabitants would insist that they had some 
 interest in the man who was to be their new spiritual teacher, 
 and they sometimes opposed themselves to a presentee very 
 energetically. But the law, as interpreted by Dr. Robertson, 
 refused to give way. It asserted itself, in fact, now and again 
 with the help of a troop of dragoons. And it came to be by no 
 means an unheard of thing to make ' a desolation and call it 
 peace.' In 1756, for instance, Mr. Patrick Grant was settled 
 'to the walls of the Kirk at Nigg.' At Jedburgh the people left 
 the Church e?i masse, and built a meeting-house for young Mr. 
 Boston, the magistrates attending his induction services in their 
 robes of office. That was in 1757. A still more famous, though 
 a considerably later case, was that of St. Ninian's, where, in 
 opposition to six hundred heads of families, sixty heritors, and 
 all the elders but one, Mr. Thomson was ordained to be, as it 
 was called, ' the stipend - lifter of the parish.' To bear up, 
 however, against the weight of an overpowering authority was 
 felt, in most cases, to be impossible ; and in course of time the 
 people settled down into sullen or indifferent acquiescence. 
 Those who cared for religion left and joined the Seceders. 
 Those who were ready to take things easily (and their number 
 steadily increased) lost the little religion they had, and helped to 
 form that great outlying mass of home heathenism with which 
 we have ever since had to contend. 
 
 When one reads what were the material consequences of 'a 
 steady and uniform support of the law of patronage,' one is 
 surprised that the worldly wisdom for which Moderatism gets so 
 much credit, did not earlier take alarm. Up to a certain date 
 
Il6 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 the funds placed at the disposal of the kirk-sessions were found 
 sufficient for the support of the poor ; but when the Seceders 
 began to multiply, parochial assessments were soon found to be 
 necessary. — And the depletion continued to proceed with such 
 rapidity, that there was just cause for serious apprehensions in 
 regard to the future. In 1774 — just forty years after the first 
 Secession — a calculation was made, which showed that at least 
 one hundred and fifty congregations had sprung up outside the 
 Establishment, and that the sum which had been expended on 
 their maintenance could not have been less than ^1,200,000. 
 So large a sum taken out of a poor country in which there was 
 supposed to be a national provision for gospel ordinances, 
 represented a state of things which even political economists 
 could not view with satisfaction. 
 
 3. Doctrinal Laxity. — The stringency of Dr. Robertson's ecclesi- 
 astical polity stood out in strong contrast to his laxity in relation 
 to doctrine. He would concede nothing to the people, but he 
 was wonderfully indulgent to his own order, the clergy. There 
 was, indeed, a limit beyond which he would not go, even in that 
 connection. Sir H. Moncreiff Well wood expressly assures us 
 that what at least confirmed the Principal in his determination to 
 retire in 1780 from the leadership of the Assembly, was his 
 aversion to a movement which he felt he could not control, the 
 object of which was the abolition of the law requiring clerical 
 subscription to the Confession of Faith. But if he refused to go 
 that length, he by no means insisted on a practical conformity to 
 the Confession ; and a very uncertain sound indeed was now 
 often heard from the pulpits of the Scottish Church. 
 
 The most famous preacher of the period was Blair. ' Neither 
 of Tillotson nor of Jeremy Taylor in past times,' says Dean 
 Stanley, * nor of Arnold or Newman, or even Frederick Robertson 
 in our own time, can it be recorded, as of Blair, that his sermons 
 were translated into almost all the languages of Europe, and won 
 for their author a public reward from the Crown.' And yet, the 
 
THE ERA OF MODERATISM. H7 
 
 Dean admits, these sermons are now forgotten. People still 
 read Erskine, and Boston, and Rutherford, but the discourses 
 —auro magis aurei, as Samuel Johnson called them— of Hugh 
 Blair have gone for ever out of sight. Why? Obviously 
 because so much of their force lay in their rhetoric. Their 
 theology is, if we may say so, nowhere. There is little in 
 them to meet the needs of sinners who have been moved to ask 
 the way of life, or to guide awakened men through the per- 
 plexities and temptations of the world. 
 
 Robert Burns, whose own sympathies were anti-evangelical, 
 but who quite understood the character of his time, had, we may 
 believe, in his eye some imitator of Blair in the following 
 description. The lines indicate clearly enough wherein lay at 
 once the weakness and the strength of this order of moderate 
 preaching— its elegance of form and its emptiness of Christian 
 
 doctrine : — 
 
 What signifies his barren shine 
 
 Of moral powers and reason ? 
 His English style and gestures fine 
 
 Are a* clean out of season. 
 Like Socrates or Antonine, 
 
 Or some old pagan heathen, 
 The moral man he does define, 
 
 But ne'er a word of faith in. 
 
 That's right this day. 
 
 David Hume's humorous remark to Dr. Carlyle, after hearing 
 him preach for their mutual friend the author of Douglas, illus- 
 trates in a similar way the condition of things at this time. 
 'What did you mean,' said he, ' by treating John's congregation 
 to-day to one of Cicero's Academics? I did not think such 
 heathen morality could have passed in East Lothian.' 
 
 Blair, however, represents very much only the negative side of 
 Moderatism. The worst that can be said of his doctrine is, that 
 there was so little of it. Morality is made to take the place of 
 Christianity. But there followed him men whose religious teaching 
 became more positive, and it was no uncommon thing to hear in 
 ministerial circles an open denial of the supernatural. 
 
Il8 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 There is hardly a district in the country which has not its 
 traditions of ministers who lived and died in the Church of Scot- 
 land but were thorough Rationalists. The case of Mr. Nicoll of 
 Traquair is a curious one. His sermons were actually published 
 after his death for the express purpose of promoting Socinianism. 
 And Dr. Scott of Carluke did even better service for his faith ; 
 for, when he was taken away, he left behind him in his parish 
 the nucleus of a nonconforming Unitarian congregation. The 
 corruption in doctrine sprang from the absence of life. In the 
 Scottish Church of the eighteenth century there was no lack of 
 activity. But the activity was not displayed within the sphere 
 of spiritual religion. While a living stream oi water will keep 
 itself pure, we know what must happen with a pool in a state of 
 stagnation. 
 
 4. Freedom of Life. —The indulgence extended to the doctrine 
 of the clergy was made to embrace their conduct also. Dr. 
 Carlyle, who, writing from the interior, is, of course, one of our 
 great authorities on the subject of Moderatism, notes a signi- 
 ficant feature in the character of Robertson's predecessor in the 
 leadership, Dr. Patrick Cuming. 'He had,' says he, 'both 
 learning and sagacity, and very agreeable conversation, with a 
 constitution able to bear the conviviality of the times? For the 
 habits of their day the clergy were, of course, not exclusively 
 responsible ; but the times being what they were, social tempta- 
 tions were many, and there were not a few who succumbed to 
 them. But the Church courts, which were severe to tyranny in 
 the repression of popular discontent, were exceedingly tender in 
 the exercise of discipline ; and although no cases could reach the 
 Assembly but such as were extraordinarily clamant, the instances 
 of deposition or suspension for moral offences were as uncommon 
 as for heresy. 
 
 5. A Revolutionary Time. — We have spoken of Principal Robert- 
 son's reign as marking the time when Moderatism culminated, 
 
THE ERA OF MODERATISM. II 9 
 
 but it would be very unjust to lay at his door all the doubtful 
 features of the period. A great many things contributed to 
 make the latter half of the eighteenth century what it was. 
 The breath of a new era was being felt over all Europe. In 
 France especially there was being developed that impatience of 
 the past, and of the existing, which broke out in the Revolution 
 of 1789. The stir in men's minds which was experienced else- 
 where, affected Scotland as well as other countries, and, the spell 
 of the ancient religion being to a great extent broken, a portion 
 of the perfervidum ingenium of the people naturally found 
 expression in sympathy with the spirit of the age. If the 
 country had been larger, the literary activity which so strikingly 
 characterized the period might have been displayed outside 
 the Church or without reference to it. At present it never 
 occurs to us to think of the ecclesiastical connections of our 
 poets, our historians, or our philosophers. But in Scotland, in 
 the eighteenth century, the Church was very much coextensive 
 with the nation, and whatever was then written had a bearing 
 on it and an interest for it, which we can now hardly realize. 
 Even Hume, sceptic though he was, hung about the vestibule. 
 He did not give over attending public worship, nor did he cease 
 to be on excellent terms with the leading ministers of the Church. 
 And the same friendly intercourse was maintained with all the 
 men who were trying to introduce from different quarters new 
 light into the country. 
 
 Adam Smith published his work on the Moral Sentiments in 
 1750, and his Wealth of Nations in 1776. Hume composed his 
 Treatise on Human Nature in France, and published it in 1734. 
 The first of his Essays appeared in 1742, and his Inquiry into the 
 Principles of Morals in 1752. Lord Kaimes, in the same year 
 i. l 75 2 }i gave to the world his work on the Principles of Morality 
 and Natural Religion. While Thomas Reid, the founder of the 
 distinctively Scottish School of Philosophy, published his Inquiry 
 into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense in the 
 year 1764. Reid began his public career as a parish minister, 
 
120 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 His settlement in New Machar was very distasteful to the people, 
 and he was indebted to Principal Robertson's high-handed law 
 for his admission. But he overcame the opposition ultimately 
 by his personal kindliness, and those who fought against his 
 induction would in the end have fought to prevent his trans- 
 ference to Aberdeen. It is said of him by his biographer, Dugald 
 Stewart, that he was so modest that he did not venture to preach 
 his own sermons, but gave his people in their stead the better 
 discourses of Tillotson and Evans ! 
 
 Let the reader note the dates of the various books mentioned 
 above. He will see that they are all embraced within the period of 
 Dr. Robertson's leadership. And putting these two things together, 
 — the evidence these works supply of the extraordinary mental 
 activity which was then abroad, and the intimacy of the leading 
 clergy with their authors, — it will at once be seen that, in order to 
 understand the Church of the time, it is necessary to take into 
 account not merely its internal and peculiarly ecclesiastical 
 currents, but likewise the forces which were operating upon it 
 from without. There can be no doubt in any case that the 
 diversion of the clerical mind to non-professional studies, and the 
 spirit of doubt and philosophical questioning which was abroad, 
 told injuriously on the pulpit of the period. And one illustration 
 of this is given by Dr. M'Kelvie in his Annals of the United 
 Presbyterian Church. He names no fewer than thirty-five 
 Secession congregations which resulted from the ' negative 
 theology ' of parochial clergymen. 
 
 6. The Seceders. — Meanwhile another stream with better ele- 
 ments in it was flowing and expanding over the country. The 
 Secession, which started in 1733 with four congregations, had 
 multiplied itself fifty-fold before the century ended. It, too, had 
 had its tempestuous seasons. So early as 1749 there took place 
 what was always pathetically spoken of afterwards as ' The 
 Breach? Over what seems to us now a small point — the right 
 reading of an oath require^, of burgesses — there arose a quarrel 
 
THE ERA OF MODERATISM. 12 1 
 
 which issued in disruption. The Church of the Erskines split 
 into two— one section coming to be known as the Burgher, 
 the other as the Anti-Burgher Synod. These two bodies 
 coalesced again long afterwards, — in 1820, — and then adopted a 
 new name, that of the United Secession. But many years before 
 that last date each of the parts had suffered additional mutila- 
 tion. The stir of the French Revolution, and the new ideas 
 which were imported in connection with it, told not merely on 
 the Establishment, but on those outside of it. The kind of effect, 
 however, which was produced upon the Seceders was very 
 different from that which was produced upon the Moderate 
 clergy. Whatever was the rationale of it, the new epoch appears 
 to have impelled many of them in the direction of those views of 
 the spirituality of Christ's kingdom which ultimately developed 
 into Voluntaryism. The drift of these novelties was not accept- 
 able to all in either Synod. The Burghers and Anti-Burghers 
 alike threw off fragments which claimed to retain the old light, 
 and the new century began with this state of things, — the offshoot 
 from the Revolution Church having undergone extraordinary 
 extension on the whole, but internally weakened by discord and 
 division. 
 
 This tendency to split up into fragments characterized the 
 elder as well as the later Nonconformists. The Cameronians, 
 or Reformed Presbyterians, did not always hang together any 
 more than the Seceders. And it is a difficult and intricate 
 business even to trace their history. But there can be no doubt 
 that all these bodies exercised a powerful influence on the age 
 to which, they belonged ; and there is no accounting for that 
 but in this way, that, as it has been expressed, they ' preached 
 savoury doctrine.' In other words, they were intensely and 
 earnestly evangelical, and had power to attract and tell upon the 
 people in a manner which the coldness and culture of Moderatism 
 could not imitate. 
 
 7. Evangelical Literature.— It is also to be remembered, that if 
 
122 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 the eighteenth century produced the histories of Robertson, the 
 rhetoric of Blair, and the philosophy of Reid, it also produced 
 works which had a far wider effect upon the generation than 
 these. Not to speak of Boston, Willison, and M'Laurin, who 
 never left the Church, there were among the Seceders men whose 
 writings were at one time to be found in the house of almost 
 every Scottish cottar. Among these were the Sermons of 
 Ralph Erskine and The Scots Worthies of Howie of Lochgoin. 
 The first of the many editions through which the latter work has 
 passed was published in 1757, just when Moderatism had cul- 
 minated ; and that it must have helped to intensify the popular 
 dislike for Robertson's policy, will be readily admitted by all who 
 know its character. 
 
 8. Praying Societies. — Perhaps, however, in trying to account 
 for the rapid increase of the Secession, we too much lose sight 
 of an institution which originated in prelatic times, and survived 
 the Revolution. We refer to what were called the Praying 
 Societies. These societies are to be distinguished from the 
 ' Society Men/ who were Cameronians and Nonconformists. 
 They consisted (at least to begin with) simply of godly people, 
 scattered over the country, who met together from time to time 
 for their mutual edification. What good they did in keeping the 
 temple lamp burning in dark times, we can easily imagine ; but 
 we can also see how, when the country began to ring with 
 theological disputation, these associations became the centres ot 
 a religious propagandism. The Moderate clergy did not approve 
 of these irregular gatherings. The Evangelicals sought to 
 regulate them, but, on the whole, they did approve of them. 
 The only non-controversial pamphlet ever published by Mr. 
 Hog, the leader of the Marrow Men, was addressed to one of 
 the societies ; and Ebenezer Erskine did not think it superfluous 
 for him to prepare rules for their direction. In these circum- 
 stances it is not wonderful that the Secession had their 
 sympathy, and was everywhere strengthened by accessions fiom 
 
THE ERA OF MODERATISM. I 23 
 
 their ranks. Dr. M 'Kelvie, indeed, gives the names of twenty- 
 five separated congregations which originated in their meetings. 
 
 Apart from their relation to the Secession, these praying 
 societies — scattered over the country — must have had their 
 effect on the public sentiment of the period. It is to take a 
 superficial view of things, to consider only the course of party 
 politics in the Assembly. We must think, also, of the spirit of 
 the time. But in thinking of the spirit of the time, — as repre- 
 sented, for example, by Hume, — we must remember likewise 
 how his scepticism was resisted by currents of another sort 
 breathing through the land from the Spirit of life. 
 
 9. Moderatism at the Close of the Century. — After Robertson's 
 retirement, in 1780, the Church became worse and better. It was 
 in 1786 that Dr. M'Gill of Ayr published his work on the death 
 of Christ, and virtually avowed himself an Arian in it. The 
 Assembly took cognizance of the production, but was easily 
 satisfied, and he was not even rebuked. To this time also 
 belongs our Scottish lyrist, Robert Burns, who himself adhered 
 to what was then called the New Light School of religionists, 
 and whose attitude there is most significantly described by his 
 biographer, Allan Cunningham. It is enough to say that the 
 school, alike in theory and practice, was entirely such as to meet 
 the liberal conditions of Mr. Buckle. 
 
 And yet things were better. It would be unpardonable to 
 forget that even among those who were 'Moderate' in their 
 public politics, were always some devout men who in their 
 country parishes were doing a quiet and useful work for their 
 Master. The number of these imperceptibly increased. Dr. 
 Hill, who succeeded Dr. Robertson in the leadership, was a 
 theologian, and the lectures he gave at St. Andrews, though 
 not brilliant, were sound. His influence, therefore, was on the 
 whole good ; all the more, perhaps, that his distance from the 
 centre prevented him from governing too much. Besides, the 
 leaders of an active evangelicalism had never altogether died 
 
124 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 out of any district in the Church ; and it was one of the first 
 things to show the quickening effect of that turn of the tide 
 which marks the beginning of modern European history. The 
 true character of Moderatism, indeed, never appeared more 
 strikingly than it did in 1796, when the famous debate on 
 missions took place in the General Assembly. The proposal 
 to appoint a collection to help in propagating the gospel abroad 
 was treated with a fine moral indignation which, in other cir- 
 cumstances, it would be quite entertaining to read. ' While 
 there remains at home,' exclaimed Mr. Hamilton of Gladsmuir, 
 the mover of the condemnatory motion, ' a single individual 
 without the means of religious knowledge, to propagate it abroad 
 would be improper and absurd.' ' This,' said his seconder, Dr. 
 Carlyle, with righteous severity — ' this is the first time I remember 
 to have ever heard such a proposal made.' The proposal was 
 of course negatived. Nevertheless, there were men in the Church 
 who were not prepared to wait till the Assembly had been con- 
 verted. Under the auspices of Dr. Balfour in Glasgow, and Dr. 
 Love in Edinburgh, private missionary societies were established 
 in both these cities, and the amount of support they received 
 was sufficient to show that the dominion of Moderatism was 
 shaking. 
 
 It was not itself conscious, however, of its approaching 
 decadence, because one of its last acts before the century ended 
 was to commit another of those stupid mistakes which have split 
 up the Scottish Church needlessly into fragments. Among the 
 men awakened by the din of the French Revolution was Robert 
 Haldane of Airthry. Having been led to accept Christ for 
 himself, he became filled with a longing desire to make Him 
 known to others. With this in view he sold his estate, that he 
 might proceed as a missionary to India. The intolerance of the 
 East India Company shut that door against him, and he then 
 turned to the neglected classes at home. If the Moderate 
 leaders had but known the day of their visitation, they would 
 have welcomed such a helper ; and no less those who about 
 
THE ERA OF MODERATISM. 1 25 
 
 the same time sought to cany over the border the new life that 
 had begun to stir in England — such men as Rowland Hill and 
 Charles Simeon. But they were no more enlightened now than 
 they had been when the Erskines were driven into exile. In 
 1799 they passed an Act which, among other things, prohibited 
 all ministers of the Establishment ' from employing to preach, 
 upon any occasion, or dispense any of the ordinances of the 
 gospel,' persons not qualified to accept a presentation ; and also 
 'from holding ministerial communion with such persons.' 
 
 The Act made the Church of Scotland a sect, and shut it out 
 from all intercommunion, on equal terms, with the catholic 
 world. But it served its purpose. It shut Simeon and Hill 
 and Haldane out of all Established places of worship, and that 
 was what was wanted. It did a great deal more than that, how- 
 ever. It drove another band of faithful men into Secession. 
 The Haldanes were loyal sons of the Church, and had no 
 thought whatever of any ecclesiastical action. What they 
 desired was room and opportunity to preach the gospel. To get 
 these they reared tabernacles here and there, — the very name 
 indicating the temporary character of the resource. But we all 
 know how the little spark developes into the great conflagration. 
 The exigencies of their position brought them into contact with 
 England, and a new form of Church government, and we have 
 Moderatism to thank for the various forms of Scottish Congre- 
 gationalism. 
 
 1. What did the Moderate era begin? 
 
 2. Why may that date be fixed on ? 
 
 3. Describe the character of Principal Robertson. 
 
 4. To what evils did his policy lead in vacant parishes ? 
 
 5. Was his sroerity displayed all round? 
 
 6. In what did he show his laxity ? 
 
 7. Who was the great preacher of the time? 
 
 8. What was the character of the preaching? 
 
 9. Did other causes operate to make the age ? 
 
 10. What were they ? 
 
 1 1 . A T ame some of the influential writers of the period, and their 
 
 books. 
 
T26 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 12. Hoio did the doctrinal teaching in the Church tell upon the 
 
 Secession ? 
 
 13. What famous evangelical books date from this a»el 
 
 14. Give the history of the praying societies. 
 
 15. Did Moderatism groiv worse or better towards the close of the 
 
 century ? 
 
 16. What notable event took place in the Assembly of 1796 ? 
 
 17. To what Act do zee owe the existence of Scottish Congrega- 
 
 tionalism ? 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL. 
 
 The late Professor I slay Burns, in a work which has not been 
 sufficiently appreciated, — The Pastor of Kilsyth, — describes in so 
 graphic a way the dawn of the new time, which began with the 
 present century, that we cannot possibly do better than quote 
 his words : — 
 
 ' It was/ says he, ' the expiring of one age and the birth of 
 another — like that mysterious change which takes place in each 
 diurnal round during that solemn interval between the night and 
 the morning which all watchers in sick-chambers know so well. 
 '" Everybody," says a singularly striking and suggestive writer, 
 " everybody at least who has watched by a sick-bed, knows that 
 days have their appointed times, and die as well as men. There 
 is one awful minute in the twenty-four hours when the day 
 palpably expires ; and then there is a reach of utter vacancy, of 
 coldness and darkness ; and then a new day is born, and earth 
 restored throbs again." ... If there is anything fanciful as 
 regards the death and birth of days, it holds true unquestion- 
 ably in regard to the death and birth of those epoch days which 
 are the true days of the world. There are moments when the 
 whole frame of things in the sphere of man's higher life seems 
 " decaying and waxing old, and ready to vanish away," and then 
 again it awakens and starts forward with a bound to a new stage 
 of its destined race. 
 
 ' In the present case the critical moment, "the awful minute" 
 of pause and transition between life and death, lay probably 
 somewhere between the ninetieth and the last year of the century 
 
 127 
 
128 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 — nearer, perhaps, to the former than to the latter. At the 
 beginning of that decade the night was at its very depth of 
 chilliness and utter gloom ; before it closed, the morning breath 
 had swept over the world. 
 
 ' During the same interval, too, there passed away most of those 
 faithful witnesses who, during the latter half of the century, had 
 maintained the standard of the truth in evil days, as if washed 
 down by the refluent tide of the expiring age to which they 
 belonged and in which their generation work was done. John 
 Wesley died in 1791 ; Bishop Home in 1792 ; John Berridge in 
 1793 ; William Romaine in 1792 ; Henry Venn in 1797; William 
 Cowper in 1800, — as if entering one by one on their rest either 
 at early dawn or break of day. John Newton lingers a little 
 while behind, as a connecting link between the old generation 
 and the new ; but in seven years more he, too, is summoned 
 home. 
 
 ' Meanwhile another band of like brave spirits has been com- 
 ing forward in their place to fight the same battle amid more 
 stirring scenes and in a wider and more conspicuous sphere. The 
 tide quickly turns. Evangelism, hitherto an obscure and scouted 
 sect, skulking in byways and in corners, and confined almost 
 exclusively to the lower orders of social life, climbs upward, 
 and vindicates for itself a place in the highest circles and most 
 influential spheres in the land. 
 
 1 By the opening of the century the morning had fairly dawned. 
 In the State, Wilberforce is in the very zenith of his influence and 
 his fame. In the Church, Charles Simeon has fought fairly through 
 his first struggles at Cambridge, and has nobly maintained his 
 ground. Meanwhile, in an humbler sphere, the brave Rowland 
 Hill pursues rejoicingly his evangelistic work in Surrey Chapel ; 
 and the Haldanes, with their "good news," traverse the length and 
 breadth of Scotland ; while far away in the distant East, William 
 Carey and Claudius Buchanan, the leaders of a noble band, are 
 already in the thick of battle on the high places of the heathen 
 field. In 1797 the Practical View of Christianity was published. 
 
THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL. 1 29 
 
 In 1799 the Church Missionary Society was instituted. Other 
 kindred institutions had either preceded it by a few years or 
 speedily followed. As time drew on, the morning grew and grew. 
 In 1805, Henry Martyn sailed for India. In 1806 the Slave 
 Trade Abolition Bill was passed. In 181 1 the tongue of Thomas 
 Chalmers was first unloosed to preach the truth. In 181 7 the 
 Astronomical Discourses were published, and ran a race of 
 popular favour and rapid circulation with the Tales of my Land- 
 lord. Meanwhile, the friends of evangelical religion multiply 
 everywhere ; faithful ministers increase ; books of serious piety, 
 with or without the charm of genius, are published and eagerly 
 bought up and circulated ; Leigh Richmond's tracts, Bickersteth's 
 treatises, the Olney hymns, and Foster's essays have each their 
 mission and their work, and travel hither and thither in thousands 
 over the land ; the tone of religious and moral feeling throughout 
 society at large sensibly rises, and everything seems to presage 
 the speedy advent of a day of spiritual life and refreshing, such 
 as had not been seen for two hundred years,' 
 
 1. Impatience of Pluralities. — In the Scottish Church the spirit 
 
 of the new time first showed itself in an impatience of those 
 
 convenient arrangements whereby the prominent men among 
 
 the Moderates attempted to monopolize as many as possible of 
 
 the public offices. Scarcely had the century begun when a battle 
 
 took place over a vacancy in the Edinburgh University. Dr. 
 
 Macknight wished to be Professor of Mathematics as well as 
 
 minister of a parish, and the leaders of his party saw no harm in 
 
 the conjunction. But there had been silently growing up in the 
 
 Church higher views of the functions of the Christian ministry ; 
 
 and though pluralities themselves did not receive their coup de 
 
 grace for a good many years after, there was now displayed a 
 
 very keen dislike to this particular plurality. Dr. Macknight was 
 
 therefore defeated. And the triumph of Sir John Leslie (with 
 
 the help of the Evangelicals) was hailed as a hopeful sign of the 
 
 times. 
 
 I 
 
130 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 2. Dr. Andrew Thomson. — But the reforming element appeared in 
 unmistakable force when Dr. Andrew Thomson became minister 
 of New Greyfriars Parish, Edinburgh. He had been ordained 
 in 1802 at Sprouston. He was translated in 1806 to Perth. And 
 in 1 8 10 he was transferred to the metropolis. What he at once 
 became there may be inferred from the fact that when St. George's 
 was opened, — the cathedral of the communion, as it was evidently 
 intended to be, — the man who was thought worthiest to be its 
 first minister was Dr. Thomson. His induction to this, his last 
 charge, took place in 1814. From that date a torch was lifted up 
 in Scotland before which the Moderatism of the Church steadily 
 waned. 
 
 ' Religion,' says Mr. Maclagan in his interesting History of St. 
 George's, 'was not in disrepute at the time of Dr. Thomson's 
 appointment. . . . Some earnestness there was in connection 
 with one or two congregations which had recently obtained 
 ministers of evangelical belief, faithful gospel preaching, and 
 consistent Christian walk and conversation. But the general 
 atmosphere was extremely worldly, cold, and indifferent ; and 
 church-going, as a rule, was attended to very much because it 
 was generally considered a proper thing to be done. . . . But the 
 preaching of Dr. Thomson was like a bombshell falling among 
 the people. Not only did he give constant prominence to the 
 distinctive gospel doctrines of grace and redemption by an 
 atonement, but in terms of great directness and plainness of 
 speech he denounced the customs of a society calling itself 
 Christian ; and in a marvellously short time, by his zeal and 
 faithfulness under God, a remarkable change was effected in 
 the habits and pursuits of many of his people.' 
 
 One of Dr. Thomson's first enterprises in the general interests 
 of [Evangelicalism was the establishment of The Christian In- 
 structor. That remarkable publication, which did for the new 
 cause in Scotland what The Tracts for the Times did for the 
 Oxford movement, commenced its career in August 18 10, and at 
 once became a centre round which there rallied all who desired 
 
THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL. 131 
 
 to see the Church return to the old lines of the Reformation and 
 the Covenants. Its early numbers are tame enough. From the 
 kind of 'Religious Intelligence' which it reports, one can see 
 very plainly the lie of its sympathies. It was always heartily in 
 favour of Bible societies and missions, and that comparatively 
 novel institution the Sabbath school. But as the currents 
 quickened, it grew bolder and more pronounced, until its tren- 
 chant advocacy of evangelicalism provoked a vote of censure 
 from the Moderate majority in the General Assembly itself. 
 
 3. Thomas M'Crie and Dr. Cook. — Another sign of the changing 
 time appeared in the new direction which was given to the 
 literary tastes of the clergy. The rising hope of the dominant 
 party was Dr. George Cook, then of Laurencekirk. Like Dr. 
 Robertson, he devoted himself to history ; but, unlike him, he 
 chose ecclesiastical subjects for investigation, and in 181 1 
 published a work on the Reformation. A few months later there 
 appeared a very much more famous book in the same line, 
 M'Crie's Life of John Knox. And these two productions, as 
 they indicated an already existing inclination on the part of the 
 age to look back, so they helped to intensify the tendency to 
 do so. 
 
 M'Crie and Cook fairly represented the two streams which can 
 always be more or less distinctly traced through the whole of 
 Scottish Church history ; and the Itistructor, though a Church 
 magazine, instantly claimed kinship with the former. M'Crie was 
 a Seceder, but he was in hearty sympathy with the Reformers. 
 Cook was a Churchman, but (it was observed) 'he maintains 
 uncommon reserve concerning the particular doctrines of the 
 Reformers,' and is 'evidently perplexed on what ground to 
 pronounce Patrick Hamilton a martyr for the truth ' at all. 
 Thus a fresh illustration was given of Hill Burton's shrewd 
 remark in regard to the difference ecclesiastically between 
 England and Scotland : 'The great Establishment of England,' 
 he7 said/ ' kept to its principles, while the Dissenters struck out 
 
132 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 innovations. On the other hand, Scottish Dissent always tended 
 to preserve the old principles of the Church ; whence the Estab- 
 lishment, by the progress of enlightenment, as some said, — by 
 deterioration, according to others, — was lapsing.' Dr. Andrew 
 Thomson recognised ' the succession ' of the ancient Church 
 rather in the Seceder than in the Moderate parish minister. 
 
 The body to which Dr. M'Crie belonged was a very small one, 
 with an almost tragic history. It formed part of the Erskine 
 Secession in 1732, and a part also of the Anti-Burgher Synod 
 which was constituted on the occasion of 'the Breach' in 1749. 
 But it set up for itself in 1806, when a document called the 
 Narrative and Testimo7iy was sought to be imposed upon its 
 ministers as a term of communion. This document was under- 
 stood by four men — M'Crie, Hog, Bruce, and Aitken — as 
 embodying the principles of Voluntaryism. They would have 
 had no objection to remain where they were, if they had been 
 permitted to dissent, and if the matter had been allowed to rest 
 as one of forbearance. But no toleration was extended to them, 
 and they were making preparations to secede when the majority 
 took the thing into their own hands, and pronounced a summary 
 sentence upon them of deposition. The result was the forma- 
 tion of 'The Constitutional Associate Presbytery,' which de- 
 veloped in time into the Synod of Original Seceders. This 
 body, after doing some admirable service, joined the Free 
 Church in 1852, headed by a son of M'Crie, who inherited his 
 father's tastes, and contributed materially in his day to increase 
 the popular interest in Scottish Church history. 
 
 4. Conversion of Chalmers. — A far more important event, how- 
 ever, than any that has yet been mentioned in the present 
 connection, was the conversion of Dr. Chalmers. He had been 
 ordained in 1803 at Kilmany, but he was then a Moderate, with 
 all the characteristic attributes of the order. He had no real 
 understanding of the message which, as a minister of the gospel, 
 he had been commissioned to deliver. He had no adequate 
 
THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL. 1 33 
 
 conception of the dignity or difficulty of his office. And as there 
 seemed to him then no incongruity in his being at one and the 
 same time a Professor of Mathematics in St. Andrews and the 
 pastor of a country parish a good many miles away, so he never 
 hesitated to let it be seen that his heart went with his philoso- 
 phical rather than with his theological pursuits. The crisis of 
 his life came when, on the 24th of December 18 10, he began to 
 read Wilberforce's Practical View of Christianity. ' As I got on 
 in reading it,' he says, ' I felt myself on the eve of a great 
 revolution in all my opinions about Christianity.' Many things 
 had prepared him to receive the light — a long illness, family 
 bereavements, lines of study which he had been providentially 
 led to pursue, and other things. But through all the Spirit of 
 God was guiding him ; and when at last he rose above the mists, 
 he soon compelled the country to recognise his mission as that 
 of the great religious leader of his age. 
 
 God can bestow no greater common gift on a cause than that 
 of a man of genius and eloquence to advocate it. The success of 
 the Reformation was secured when Knox arose. And in like 
 manner the triumphant issue of the evangelical revival might 
 have been foretold, when first Andrew Thomson and then 
 Thomas Chalmers appeared as its champions. 
 
 What Chalmers did in the interest of evangelical religion is 
 matter of notoriety. Removed to Glasgow in 18 14, he made the 
 pulpit which he filled in the Tron and St. John's a living power. 
 Then, in his more private parochial efforts, he not only directly 
 redeemed from the wilderness some of the waste places around 
 him, but inaugurated a new home missionary era for the entire 
 Church. In 1823 he was translated to St. Andrews to fill the chair 
 of Moral Philosophy ; but he did not thereupon sink into the mere 
 abstract academic lecturer. The fire which had been kindled in 
 his heart burnt everywhere. Philosophy itself assumed a new 
 life in his hands, and, under the impulse received through his 
 week-day and Sabbath teaching, there sprang up a band of 
 missionaries, some of whose names (such as that of Duff) will 
 
134 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 never be forgotten. A wider and freer field, however, opened to 
 him, when, in 1828, he was transferred to Edinburgh, and was 
 permitted to give himself up to the direct teaching of theology. 
 It might truly be said that when this vantage ground was 
 assigned to him, the cause of Moderatism was lost. To the 
 leader of the Evangelicals was now committed the training of 
 the future ministry of the Church ; and when one thinks of the 
 quality of his teaching and the energy and fervour with which it 
 was given, one ceases to wonder at the rapid progress of the 
 party he represented, and at the stand it was able to make when 
 its hour of trial arrived. 
 
 5. A Foreign Mission resolved on. — A striking sign of the rise 
 of the tide appeared in 1824, when, by a unanimous vote, the 
 General Assembly pronounced a virtual sentence of condemna- 
 tion on the anti-mission resolutions of 1796. Let us do the 
 Moderates justice here. The motion to appoint a committee to 
 prepare a Foreign Mission Scheme for the Church was made by 
 Dr. Inglis, who was at the time the Moderate leader. Dr. Inglis 
 was respected by all parties. He is said to have been an evan- 
 gelical preacher, although in his public politics he led the 
 opposite side ; and his personal devoutness was acknowledged 
 by all who knew him. But when his moving on this occasion is 
 used for the purpose of proving that Moderatism is a maligned 
 system, and that, for example, we owe to it that the Church of 
 Scotland became a missionary Church, it is only fair to tell that 
 a pretty long debate took place in the General Assembly before 
 the conclusion he sought was unanimously come to. Dr. Inglis 
 did indeed propose that the Church should turn its face toward 
 heathendom, but at the same time he, at great length, endea- 
 voured to show that civilisation must precede Christianity j and 
 Dr. Duncan of Ruthwell, who followed him, explained that he 
 would not have obtruded himself on the attention of the House 
 * could he otherwise have prevented his approbation of the 
 measure proposed by the reverend mover from being interpreted 
 
THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL. 1 35 
 
 into an approbation of the sentiments with which the measure 
 was introduced.' 
 
 It was a fortunate circumstance that a Moderate was moved to 
 lead in this matter. It secured an earlier unanimity than would 
 have been possible if the subject had been introduced by 
 Thomson or Chalmers. But it will be remembered that the 
 Evangelicals had not waited for the General Assembly to come 
 to a better mind before throwing themselves into the work. 
 Before the eighteenth century ended, they had formed societies 
 having in view the very same objects which the Church, as such, 
 was now contemplating in 1824; and although Dr. Duff was the 
 first missionary who went out to India with a commission from 
 the General Assembly, he was by no means the first minister of 
 the Church of Scotland who had been found willing to ' hazard 
 his life in the high places of the field.' Under the guidance of 
 Dr. Love, the Glasgow society had been doing noble service for 
 a quarter of a century in Africa ; and when Duff landed in India 
 in 1830, he found he had been preceded thither by such men as 
 James Mitchell, Robert Nesbit, and John Wilson. The Evan- 
 gelicals may have shown some want of faith in not earlier 
 assuming that, though a minority, they might get the Assembly 
 to concur with them in establishing a Church Mission. But it is 
 a little unreasonable to claim any credit for a dominant system 
 which positively refused to look at its obligations in 1796, which 
 compelled so many to betake themselves to extra-mural and 
 independent efforts, and which did not till 1824 begin even to 
 consider the question of whether the Church ought to make an 
 effort to ' civilise ' the heathen. 
 
 6. Dissatisfaction with Patronage. — In so stirring a time it was 
 impossible for thoughtful men to overlook the inconveniences 
 which were experienced at home through the maladjustment of 
 the civil and spiritual elements within the Church. With the 
 evangelical revival there sprang up again the old dissatisfaction 
 with the manner in which ministers were appointed to charges, 
 
136 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 and the very same year which saw the Assembly resolving to 
 engage in the missionary enterprise, saw the formation of a 
 society having for its object 'the improving of the system of 
 Church patronage.' 
 
 A notice announcing the public meeting at which the society 
 was constituted appears in The Christian Instructor for Novem- 
 ber 1824. It begins thus : ' It has long been an object of earnest 
 desire among persons concerned for the advancement of the best 
 interests of the Church of Scotland, to secure more generally 
 the appointment of ACCEPTABLE MINISTERS to parishes. The 
 subject has indeed been in a great measure neglected for many 
 years, but it has never been altogether lost sight of, and recently 
 it has attracted renewed attention ; partly from a growing im- 
 pression of the deep importance of an efficient parochial clergy, 
 and partly from the character of several appointments which 
 have been felt as injurious to the Church.' It was now proposed, 
 the notice went on to say, to raise funds for the purchase of such 
 patronages as might be offered for sale, with the view of trans- 
 ferring them to the people directly interested. 
 
 In the same number of the Instructor which contains this 
 notice, there is a significant letter which shows that besides lay 
 patronage there was another Church difficulty coming into view. 
 ' The evil [of patronage],' says the writer, ' is of enormous mag- 
 nitude. It has worked itself into our system, and has in some 
 measure become identified with it. Our Churchmen, too (I 
 mean as a body), have long ceased to remonstrate against it ; and 
 the people, when thwarted, seek other communions. The nation, 
 then, must be aroused. ... A better day is now dawning. Long 
 have we slumbered, long have we slept, in all the pomp of our 
 civil Establishment, while in our fields other sects have been 
 reaping a plenteous harvest. ... Is any insensible to the con- 
 vulsions which patronage has caused in the Church by driving 
 from it thousands and hundreds of thousands ? Nay, what is 
 mo?'e, in the partial remedy which has been applied, viz. Chapels 
 of Ease, who sees not that one distinguishing feature of Presby- 
 
THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL. 1 37 
 
 tertanisMj a parity of pastors, has been so far destroyed by intro- 
 duci?ig a ki?id of inferior clergy who are denied {certainly most 
 unjustly) any share in the government of the Church? 
 
 The meeting at which this new agitation against patronage 
 began was held in Edinburgh on the 24th of December 1824. 
 It was presided over by Mr. Houison Crauford of Craufordland, 
 and among those who took part in it were Mr. Lyon of Glenogil, 
 Sir George Sinclair, Dr. David Dickson, Dr. Henry Grey, the 
 Rev. Walter Tait, and Dr. Andrew Thomson. The movement was 
 a thoroughly well-intentioned one, but we have only to glance 
 through the speeches delivered at its start to see how utterly 
 inadequate it was to provide a remedy for the then existing state 
 of things. ' I should delight to witness,' said Mr. Lyon, ' patron- 
 ages purchased by the people themselves. They might then 
 exultingly point to their minister and say : That is our clergy- 
 man — we have purchased him with a penny a week. They would 
 have a feeling of property in their minister ; he would be con- 
 sidered by them as more their own than if merely sent among 
 them by another.' 
 
 These good men had wakened up to the apprehension of 
 great and pressing evils ; and they were feeling after something 
 that might promise relief. But this method of purchasing the 
 patronages in detail was soon seen to be totally insufficient 
 to meet the emergency, and they were driven on to face 
 the fundamental question of whether the Church could have 
 or had divested itself of its powers to carry out, in connec- 
 tion with the formation of the pastoral tie, its own essential 
 principles. 
 
 7. Church Extension.— It was not till 1828 that the General 
 Assembly formally recognised the necessity of facing on a large 
 scale the business of Church extension. Chapels of Ease had 
 been erected in many places where the demand for them was 
 clamant. But not till the year named was the spiritual condition 
 of the country at large realized in such a way as to impel to 
 
138 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 public and united action. There can be no question that the 
 movement which now began was another result of the evan- 
 gelical revival, but it was Dr. Cook who actually made the 
 proposal which set the Church in motion. It is curious, how- 
 ever, to note how helpless the Assembly felt itself to be at this 
 stage, apart from the secular arm. What was asked was the 
 appointment of a committee ' to collect information, to represent 
 the evils resulting from want of church accommodation in large 
 towns, manufacturing villages, and populous parishes, and without 
 delay to take the best mea?is for bringing the matter before the 
 notice of His Majesty 's Governmejit." 1 
 
 The committee was appointed, with Dr. Brunton as convener ; 
 but in his hands it does not appear to have achieved a great 
 deal, and the serious agitation for the extension of the Church 
 may be said to have only begun in 1834, when Chalmers was 
 named convener, and threw himself into the work with an 
 enthusiasm which set the whole country on fire. The story of 
 this movement is rather a sad one, though very important 
 practical lessons were learnt from it. It was assumed that the 
 Church could not extend itself without parliamentary help, and 
 weary years were spent in the endeavour to induce successive 
 Governments to bestow upon it fresh endowments. But all was 
 in vain. The journals of Dr. Buchanan show how good men 
 broke their hearts, hanging helplessly about the purlieus of 
 Downing Street. The Whigs refused, in the end, to give on any 
 terms. The Tories would have endowed, but they would at the 
 same time have enslaved, and such a condition was scornfully 
 rejected. At last those who were thus humiliating themselves by 
 seeking sympathy in quarters where there was none, bethought 
 them of the mine of wealth that lay at their doors in the Christian 
 liberality of their own people. To this Chalmers addressed 
 himself, and was astonished at the result. Within less than 
 seven years a sum of over ,£300,000 was contributed for his 
 scheme, and an addition made of 220 churches to the number of 
 parochial places of worship in Scotland. 
 
THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL. 139 
 
 8. Controversies.— It cannot be said, however, that the history 
 of these days is simply the history of an advancing tide, bringing 
 blessings with it at every step. At various times the country 
 was convulsed with controversies, in which the combatants were 
 not Evangelicals and Moderates, but Evangelicals and Evan- 
 gelicals. The earliest of these was that which split the Bible 
 Society into two— the bone of contention being the Apocrypha. 
 That Andrew Thomson was right in this connection, will now 
 be generally conceded. No Protestant society now insists on 
 circulating the Book of Tobit. But it is equally certain that he 
 fought the battle with a fierceness which was not always called 
 for, and that he thus occasionally wounded friends who had as 
 deep a love for the word of God as himself. 
 
 Another painful episode of the period is that which issued in 
 the excision of Campbell of Row, Edward Irving, and others for 
 heresy. Very different views have been taken of these processes, 
 and no one who has looked carefully into them will refuse to 
 allow that something can be said on both sides. But, after a 
 very patient investigation of all the facts, we have no hesitation 
 in expressing our own individual conviction that the Church, in 
 the circumstances, was rightly guided. It is not enough to take 
 up one isolated doctrine, and say of it that it ought to have been 
 tenderly dealt with because it leaned to virtue's side,— was, in 
 fact, 'only the struggle of a loving believer to find that his 
 Redeemer was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without 
 sin.' What the Church had to face was a powerful movement, 
 the drift of which was indicated by the particular heresies which 
 came to the surface ; and it showed, as events proved afterwards, 
 a wise insight into things when it refused to look lightly upon 
 what might seem to some trifling in itself, but which was really 
 serious enough when viewed in the light of a symptom. The 
 real truth we believe to be this : The Campbell-Irving movement 
 was a pseudo-evangelical movement. At its start, it put forward 
 such claims to spirituality, and looked so attractive, that some of 
 the best people in the country were led away by it. But we see 
 
140 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 what it developed into — Mauricianism on the one hand, and 
 Ritualism on the other. And we can guess what would have 
 been the issue in the Church of Scotland if it had received 
 house-room, and been allowed to spread. Perhaps it ought to 
 be better known that Campbell would not have been deposed if 
 one of the judges of the Court of Session, who happened to be a 
 member, had not assured the Assembly that only thus could he 
 be legally separated from his charge. 
 
 Yet another conflict came on later. It was the Voluntary 
 controversy, in which the unexpected spectacle was exhibited of 
 the descendants of the Erskines contending with their natural 
 allies, the Evangelicals, over the question of the relations of 
 Church and State. We say, ' contending with the Evangelicals,' 
 because it is an indisputable fact that the burden of the battle fell 
 not on the Moderates, but on Chalmers and his friends. It was 
 a hotly-contested fight, and in the course of it words were spoken 
 on both sides which their utterers would in after times have 
 gladly recalled ; but the controversy did good in various respects, 
 and the bitterness of it is long since forgotten. 
 
 What was specially brought out in connection with it was the 
 radical change which had taken place in the attitude of the 
 Seceders toward the Established Church. They were, in fact, 
 no longer Seceders looking forward to a possible return. They 
 had become Dissenters, and looked on all State endowments of 
 religion as per se unscriptural. It was no light matter for 
 Scotland when this new position was taken up. In 1820 the 
 two chief nonconforming bodies had coalesced, under the name 
 of The United Secession Church, and they now constituted an 
 organization which was formidable in many ways. It had notably 
 grown in numbers and in self-confidence ; its leading men (some 
 of them men of remarkable ability) were taking conspicuous 
 places on public platforms ; and the lie of its sympathies being 
 Liberal, in contradistinction to the Church, which was Tory, it 
 acquired an influence with one of the great political parties in 
 the State which made it impossible for any Government to 
 
THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL. 141 
 
 ignore its opinions or opposition. We may think as we like of 
 Voluntaryism as a principle, but no man with any observation 
 can fail to see that here at least was the Nemesis of Moderatism. 
 It had driven multitudes out of the Church, and had looked on 
 contemptuously or indifferently while outlying Presbyterian sects 
 were rising up around it in the wilderness. And now came its 
 reward. The new atmosphere developed new ideas. And the 
 Separatists, who were formerly either despised as powerless or 
 patronized as possible humble helps, grew into open and for- 
 midable adversaries, whose reconciliation to the Establishment 
 had become impossible. 
 
 1. Mention some of the signs of a new era. 
 
 2. On what point in the beginning of the century did Moderatism 
 
 and Evangelicalism come into collision ? 
 
 3. Who lifted first the evangelical standard in the new century ? 
 
 4. What periodical was greatly helpfid ? 
 
 5. Give some account of another great leader who rose at this time. 
 
 6. Indicate a change of attitude in the Assembly of 1824. 
 
 7. What new movement began in the same year? 
 
 8. When did the Church extension agitation begin ? 
 
 9. State the experience of the Church in that connection. 
 
 10. Who led in this movement? 
 
 11. Name the controversies of this period. 
 
 12. Give some account of the merits of each. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 CONFLICT AND DISRUPTION. 
 
 We have seen that so early as 1824 a society was formed to 
 secure some relief from the pressure of patronage. It is not 
 true, therefore, as has sometimes been affirmed, that the popular 
 movement in the Church had its origin in the political agitation 
 which preceded the passing of the Reform Bill, or in the 
 exigencies created by the Voluntary controversy. Patronage was 
 always opposed to the genius of the Scottish people, and it was 
 inevitable that an active dislike to it should arise whenever 
 there came to be a revival of evangelical religion. At the 
 same time, there is no denying that the electric state of the time 
 had much to do with the quickening of the popular discontent, 
 and was one of the causes which moved the General Assembly 
 in 1834 to pass the Veto Act. The Reform Bill became law in 
 1832. The Scotch, in the main, had taken a deep interest in its 
 passing ; and so shrewd a people could scarcely help asking 
 why, when the political franchise had been extended, the 
 ecclesiastical franchise should not also be liberalized. 
 
 Dr. Chalmers frankly explained, in a pamphlet published in 
 1840, what led him to think of the Veto. 'I was summoned,' 
 he says, ' to attend a meeting of clergymen and elders previous 
 by a few days to the Assembly of 1833. By this time there was 
 a great demand in the country and throughout the Church for 
 a mitigation of the law of patronage, and for a check on the 
 absolute will of patrons, which had become greatly more 
 paramount than was at all suited to the original design and 
 
 142 
 
CONFLICT AND DISRUPTION. 1 43 
 
 genius of Presbytery. Year after year the Assembly had been 
 plied with petitions, all of them for some change in the actual 
 system, and many of them tending to the abolition of patronage 
 altogether. Perhaps this general desire to popularize our 
 ecclesiastical institutions had become all the more urgent in 
 consequence of the movement which took place in the same 
 direction a year or two before in the political constitution of the 
 country. And nothing is more likely than that the new dangers 
 which thickened around the Establishment, not by the increase 
 of Dissenters, but by the change which had come over their 
 spirits, had led many of the Church's friends to seek for the 
 means of her greater safety in a greater hold on the affections of 
 the people, and to suggest, as the likeliest method of attaching 
 them more to the Church of their fathers, that they should recur 
 to those ancient principles which, in the days of their fathers, 
 were held in greater observation and honour, and which, after 
 all, were the purest and most prosperous days of the Church of 
 Scotland. From these and other causes there arose a very 
 general impression that something should be done ; and it was 
 at a preliminary meeting, where I happened to be one of the 
 number, that the Veto Act was first proposed as a method for 
 giving effect to the will of the people, and with the least possible 
 encroachment on the will of the patron.' 
 
 That something behoved to be done was conceded on all 
 hands. Even Dr. Cook went so far as to propose that the 
 people of a vacant parish should be allowed to state their 
 reasons why they objected to any presentee offered to them, 
 and that the presbytery should be authorized to refuse to 
 induct him if they reckoned these reasons sufficient to justify 
 their opposition. 
 
 The unworkableness of that plan was foreseen long before it 
 was applied. It was applied afterwards under the Aberdeen 
 Act, and its utter inefficacy was demonstrated. The Evangelicals 
 held that ' unacceptableness ' for any cause was a reasonable 
 objection in limine; and they set themselves to devise a scheme 
 
144 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 under which, while the existing order of things was undisturbed, 
 the will of the people might be recognised, as of old, as a potential 
 element in all settlements. 
 
 i. A Turning-point in the History. — It may be said of the 
 ' Veto,' that of all the plans promising to be in the least effectual, 
 it was the one which looked most rational and moderate. The 
 CALL had been allowed to fall aside, but it had still its legal 
 place in the Church's constitution. It was really as unwarrant- 
 able under the law to ignore the mind of the people, as it would 
 have been to ignore the presentation of a patron. The Assembly, 
 therefore, would not have gone beyond its powers, if it had 
 directed that no ordination should proceed where a majority of 
 the communicants had refused to CALL. This, however, was not 
 proposed. An arrangement very much more favourable to 
 patronage was agreed to — viz. that an arrest should be made on 
 a presbytery's procedure only when a majority of the male heads 
 of families, being communicants, came forward and formally 
 objected to an induction. This was what was carried, on the 
 motion of Lord Moncreiff, in the Assembly of 1834 — a memorable 
 era, for it was then that the tide which had been long rising 
 fairly turned, and that the dominant place in the Church passed 
 from the Moderates to the Evangelicals. 
 
 The step was not taken without the most serious considera- 
 tion and consultation ; and for a time afterwards the course of 
 the Church was one of growing and remarkable prosperity. 
 Between 1834 and 1838 its contributions to foreign missions 
 trebled. In 1836 it established a colonial scheme. In 1838 Dr. 
 Keith, Mr. M'Cheyne, Dr. Andrew Bonar, and Dr. Black were 
 sent out to the East to seek for a suitable station in which to 
 commence a mission to Israel, and a mission was begun in the 
 following year. Other interests flourished in a like manner ; a 
 marked revival of spiritual religion took place all over the 
 country, and the quickening culminated in great awakenings in 
 Dundee and elsewhere. 
 
CONFLICT AND DISRUPTION. 1 45 
 
 2. What the Battle was about. — But so early as October 1834 
 the little cloud appeared which was destined to fill the sky with 
 gloom. Mr. Robert Young was presented to Auchterarder, and 
 although his call was signed by only three persons, and his 
 settlement was opposed by 287 heads of families, he refused to 
 see in the facts a reason why he should retire. The presbytery 
 objected to go farther, and he appealed to the civil courts for 
 power to compel them to do so. 
 
 Then there came to be raised quite a debateable question ; 
 that, namely, of the legality of the Veto Act. Had the Church, 
 through its supreme court, any right to take the step it did to 
 secure to the people a potential voice in the choosing of their 
 ministers ? Theoretically (it was supposed) the Church and the 
 State were two independent institutions, which, for their mutual 
 advantage, had entered into a contract, and there was no cause 
 for any surprise being felt when a difference of opinion arose as 
 to the terms of that contract. When Mr. Young claimed, there- 
 fore, that under the contract the presbytery was bound to take 
 him on trial, and if they found him qualified, to induct him in 
 the face of the people's opposition, the Church had no option 
 but to follow him into the courts, with the view of ascertaining 
 whether that was really the view which the State on its part took 
 of the nature of the common bargain. It did not itself take 
 that view. It earnestly protested against any such doctrine as 
 that ' intrusion ' had, with its consent, been made a principle of 
 the Church. But, recognising the point as debateable, it em- 
 ployed advocates to show to the civil authorities that neither on 
 the one side nor on the other had the contract ever contemplated 
 the making of such an arrangement. 
 
 While the inquiry, however, was proceeding upon this perfectly 
 legitimate line, claims began to be put forward on behalf of the 
 State which startled the Church from its dream of security. 
 One after another of the civil judges declared that the contract 
 was a fiction — that the Church as such had no original or inde- 
 pendent jurisdiction, and that in all causes, civil and eccle^ 
 
 K 
 
I46 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 siastical, the Court of Session and the House of Lords were 
 supreme. 
 
 1 That our Saviour,' said the Lord President, ' is the Head of 
 the Kirk of Scotland, in any temporal, or legislative, or judicial 
 sense, is a position which I can dignify by no other name than 
 absurdity. The Parliament is the temporal head of the 
 Church, from whose acts, and from whose acts alone, it exists as 
 the National Church, and from which alone it derives all its 
 powers? 
 
 What this meant was illustrated in a series of acts which 
 showed with unmistakable plainness on what terms alone the 
 Scottish people were to have the benefit of a national Establish- 
 ment. 
 
 (1.) The civil courts intimated that the passing of the Veto 
 Act was ultra vires of the Assembly ; and on the principles which 
 they laid down in saying so, they would have pronounced equally 
 invalid any other arrangement whatever under which the voice 
 of the people was made potential in vacant congregations. 
 
 (2.) The Presbytery of Auchterarder was ordered, under a 
 threat of heavy pecuniary damages, to take Mr. Young on trial, 
 and if they were satisfied with his life and doctrine, to induct him 
 in defiance of the popular opposition. 
 
 (3.) In the case of Lethendy a still more high-handed course 
 was pursued. The presbytery of the bounds had presumed to 
 ordain a minister to a purely spiritual cure there, and for this 
 they were summoned to appear at the bar of the Court of Session, 
 and told that nothing but the generous leniency of the judges 
 stood in the way of their being sent to prison. 
 
 (4.) At Strathbogie a very different experience was encountered. 
 There the court met an order of entirely subservient Presbyters. 
 These men were prepared to do anything whatever that the 
 civil law required. The General Assembly itself interposed to 
 prevent them intruding a presentee into Marnoch in the face 
 of the whole people of that parish, but its monitions were treated 
 with contempt. For contumacy of the most daring kind, they 
 
CONFLICT AND DISRUPTION. 147 
 
 were first suspended by their recognised spiritual superiors and 
 then deposed, but the civil judges ordered them to continue 
 to exercise their spiritual functions notwithstanding; and the 
 strange spectacle was witnessed of ministers who in the eye of 
 their Church were for the time being simply laymen, adminis- 
 tering the most sacred ordinances under secular sanction alone. 
 
 (5.) In the same connection the judges did a yet more extra- 
 ordinary thing. They drew a cordon round a particular district, 
 and proclaimed that no man was to be allowed to preach in it 
 except those whose commission was countersigned by them- 
 selves. 
 
 (6.) Finally, as they claimed the right to annul spiritual sen- 
 tences, so they took it upon them to decide for the Church as 
 well as for themselves, who alone had a title to sit in ecclesi- 
 astical courts. — Having laid down the law on that point, they 
 proceeded to revise, as it suited them, the proceedings of all 
 presbyteries which were not constituted as they thought they 
 should be. There was no limit to their powers of intrusion under 
 this rule. Wherever there was a quoad sacra minister, his 
 presence was held to vitiate all processes whatever, and kirk- 
 sessions found, to their consternation, that the key of discipline 
 was not in their hands, but in those of the sheriff. 
 
 3. The Church's Alarm. — The Church was confounded by this 
 succession of assaults upon its liberties, and the outcry which it 
 made was loud and violent. It had been proceeding with a 
 light heart and an elastic step — like a giant refreshed by sleep — 
 to do all the good it could for Scotland and for the world, when 
 it was startled by finding the State, with which it was in alliance, 
 and whose interests it was trying to serve, seizing it, as it were, 
 by the throat, and doing its very best to pinion and paralyze it. 
 It discovered that the Establishment, which was intended to 
 support it, was being made very much less of a help than Saul's 
 armour was to David. It was, in fact, proving to be not a help 
 at all, but a set of fetters interfering on every hand with the free 
 
148 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 exercise of its powers. If the judges were right in their interpre- 
 tation of the law, then the Church of Scotland had, for the sake 
 of its endowments, bartered away what it had no right to dispose 
 of. Its earnest contention was that the law was not interpreted 
 correctly, and it was supported in this view by five of the most 
 distinguished Senators of the College of Justice. But against 
 a preponderating judicial vote it had no legal remedy ; and it 
 asked the Legislature to interfere with a new Act to prevent the 
 catastrophe of a Disruption. The Crown was advised at the 
 time by a Conservative Ministry — and especially by Sir James 
 Graham and Lord Aberdeen. The time came when both these 
 statesmen expressed bitter regret that they had failed to appre- 
 hend the true nature of the crisis. Sir James told Dr. Buchanan 
 that ' he would never cease to regard it as the saddest event in 
 his life that he should have had any hand ' in what he called ' a 
 most fatal act.' But, unfortunately, they refused to listen to all 
 warnings at the moment, and the crash came. 
 
 4. A Disruption made inevitable. — A disruption was made 
 absolutely unavoidable. The only conditions on which the 
 State was willing to maintain its alliance with the Church were 
 these : — 
 
 (1.) That what was in effect Principal Robertson's famous law 
 should continue to be binding, popular acceptability being set 
 aside as not at all a sine qua 11011 in the matter of a settlement. 
 
 (2.) That the Church should consent to a sacrifice of certain of 
 her essential rights ; that, for example, she should surrender her 
 inherent title to carry out the principles of Presbyterianism, by 
 giving to all ministers having charge of congregations the 
 position of rulers as well as of teachers, and concede that its 
 most spiritual sentences were to be held as invalid whenever 
 declared to be so by the civil courts. 
 
 (3.) That, above all things, this controlling doctrine should be 
 accepted and acted upon : that, when any difference of opinion 
 arose between Church and State as to whether a particular 
 
CONFLICT AND DISRUPTION. 1 49 
 
 matter was civil or spiritual, it should belong to the civil judges 
 to decide supremely for both. 
 
 5. A New Breach. — The Evangelical party could not consent to 
 continue in alliance with the State on these terms. On the 18th 
 of May 1843 another great 'breach' occurred in the Church, 
 and the Revolution Establishment was made a good deal less 
 ' national ' than it had been before. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone, writing in 1849 to acknowledge receipt of a 
 copy of The Ten Years' Conflict, related to Dr. Robert Buchanan 
 an interesting little anecdote, which is worth introducing here. 
 1 A friend of mine,' he said, ' a conscientious and earnest- 
 minded French Roman Catholic, well acquainted with our 
 country and language, once told me that, amid his discourage- 
 ments in witnessing the progress of unbelief in so many quarters, 
 he had found a singular comfort in the testimony borne by the 
 ministers and members of the Free Church of Scotland to the 
 authority of conscience and of positive religious belief.' 
 
 What did take place when this new fruit of Moderate policy 
 appeared, is described by Lord Cockburn. The 18th of May 
 had arrived, and the General Assembly of the yet unbroken 
 Church of Scotland had convened. ' Dr. Welsh, Professor of 
 Church History in the University of Edinburgh, having been 
 Moderator last year, began the proceedings by preaching a 
 sermon before his Grace the Commissioner in the High Church, 
 in which what was going to happen was announced and defended. 
 The Commissioner then proceeded to St. Andrew's Church, 
 where the Assembly was to be held. The streets, especially 
 those near the place of meeting, were filled, not so much with the 
 boys who usually gaze at the annual show, as by grave and well- 
 dressed people of the middle rank. According to custom, Welsh 
 took the chair of the Assembly. Their very first act ought to 
 have been to constitute the Assembly of this year by electing 
 a new Moderator. But before this was done, Welsh rose and 
 announced that he and others who had been returned as members 
 
150 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 held this not to be a free Assembly, that, therefore, they declined 
 to acknowledge it as a court of the Church, that they meant to 
 leave the very place, and, as a consequence of this, to abandon 
 the Establishment. In explanation of the grounds of this step 
 he then read a full and clear protest. Whether from joy at the 
 prospect of getting rid of their troublesome brethren anyhow 
 (which they preferred), or from being alarmed (which to a great 
 degree was the truth), the Moderate party, though they might 
 have objected to any paper being read, even from the chair, at 
 this time attempted no interruption, which they now regret. 
 The protest resolved itself into this: That the civil court had 
 subverted what had ever been understood to be the Church ; 
 that its new principles were enforced by ruinous penalties ; and 
 that in this situation they were constrained to abandon an 
 Establishment which they felt to be repugnant to their vows and 
 to their consciences. As soon as it was read, Dr. Welsh 
 handed the paper to the clerk, quitted the chair, and went away. 
 Instantly, what appeared to be the whole left side of the house 
 rose to follow. Some applause broke from the spectators, but it 
 checked itself in a moment. One hundred and ninety-three 
 members moved off, of whom about one hundred and twenty- 
 three were ministers and about seventy elders. Among these 
 were many upon whose figures the public eye had been long 
 accustomed to rest in reverence. . . . 
 
 ' As soon as Welsh, who wore the Moderator's dress, appeared 
 in the street, and people saw that principle had really triumphed 
 over interest, he and his followers were received with the loudest 
 acclamation. They walked in procession down Hanover Street 
 to Canonmills, where they had secured an excellent hall, through 
 an unbroken mass of cheering people and beneath innumerable 
 handkerchiefs waving from the windows. But amidst this 
 exultation there was much sadness and many a tear, many a 
 grave face and fearful thought, for no one could doubt that it was 
 with sore hearts that these ministers left the Church ; and no 
 thinking man could look on the unexampled scene and behold 
 
CONFLICT AND DISRUPTION. 151 
 
 that the temple was rent, without pain and sad forebodings. No 
 spectacle since the Revolution reminded one so forcibly of the 
 Covenanters.' 
 
 ' The Free Church,' Lord Cockburn goes on to say, ' is dis- 
 tinguished from all past or existing sects of Scotch Presbyterians 
 in this, that its adherents are not almost entirely of the lower 
 orders. They have already peers, baronets, and knights, 
 provosts and sheriffs, and a long train of gentry. The Lord 
 Provost of Edinburgh walked with them from St. Andrew's 
 Church to Canonmills, where the late Provost of Glasgow and 
 the Sheriff of Mid-Lothian joined them. And that extraordinary 
 procession was dignified by about eight old Moderators, two 
 Principals of Universities, and four Theological Professors. . . . 
 This is the first time that our gentry are not only not ashamed of 
 Presbytery, but not ashamed of it with the additional vulgarity 
 of unendowed dissent. ... In some views these self-immolations 
 of the ministers are surpassed by the gallantry of the two hundred 
 probationers, who have extinguished all their hopes at the very 
 moment when the vacancies of four hundred and fifty pulpits 
 made their rapid success almost certain. . . . What similar 
 sacrifice has ever been made in the British Empire ? ... It is 
 the most honourable fact for Scotland that its whole history 
 supplies. The common sneers at the venality of our country, 
 never just, are now absurd.' 
 
 The General Assembly of the Free Church was immediately 
 constituted in the great Hall, to which Lord Cockburn refers, 
 under the moderatorship of Chalmers. Around him were 
 gathered all the men who had rendered themselves most 
 prominent in promoting ' the evangelical revival.' Candlish, 
 Cunningham, Guthrie, Gordon, Dunlop, Graham Spiers, etc., — 
 and thus a stream which might have been kept within the Estab- 
 lishment and preserved it, was driven forth to pursue an inde- 
 pendent course to its inevitable detriment. 
 
 6. The Remanent Assembly. — Meanwhile the Assembly which 
 
152 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 had been abandoned addressed itself to the work which lay 
 to its hand to do, and from the course which it pursued we 
 have no difficulty in apprehending the historical significance of 
 the event which had occurred. The Church, relieved of the 
 evangelical element, went back at once to the status quo ante 
 bellum. The Moderate party had succeeded with the help of 
 the secular arm in driving its natural opponents out of the field, 
 and with its return to power came a frank replacement of its 
 party policy. 
 
 First, the Veto Act having been declared by the civil courts to 
 be illegal, that is, to have been passed by the Church without due 
 authority, was not repealed, but simply blotted as worthless out 
 of the Statute Book, and all presbyteries were ordered to proceed 
 henceforth in the settlement of parishes 'according to the practice 
 which prevailed previously to the passing of the Act.' In other 
 words, the intrusion of an unacceptable minister upon a reclaim- 
 ing people was again recognised as a possible and a legitimate 
 contingency. 
 
 Next, the Strathbogie ministers were declared to be ministers 
 in good standing, notwithstanding that they had been solemnly 
 deposed by the supreme court of the Church. Their direct 
 right to administer the Sacraments was notoriously derived from 
 the Court of Session alone. It was within the competency of 
 those who were now in power to cancel the sentence which had 
 been passed upon them by a former General Assembly, and to 
 restore them honourably and in an orderly way to the position 
 from which they had been driven ; but that ceremony was not 
 thought to be needed. The civil authorities had pronounced the 
 Act of Deposition to be null and void, and Dr. Cook and his 
 supporters revealed their historic standpoint by bowing sub- 
 missively to the judgment. 
 
 Again, the principles of Presbyterian parity had been carried out 
 in 1833, when the ministers of the parliamentary Churches were 
 allowed to sit in Church courts ; in 1834, when the chapel of ease 
 ministers were in like manner emancipated ; and in 1 839, when 
 
CONFLICT AND DISRUPTION. 1 53 
 
 the Old Light Burgher body joined the Establishment, and their 
 congregations were allowed to retain all the spiritual privileges 
 which they had enjoyed in a state of secession. But in the 
 Stewarton case the civil judges had declared that the Church, 
 by accepting Establishment, had denuded itself of its original 
 power to do as it did ; and its acts being pronounced to have 
 been 'incompetently passed,' were obsequiously, and without 
 going through the form of repeal, swept out of the Statute 
 Book. 
 
 In connection with all these proceedings it will be observed 
 the ruling principle was unreservedly recognised, that when the 
 civil court had spoken, there remained nothing for the Church to 
 say. The Court of Session intimated that the Veto Act was 
 incompetent, and the Church as re-established after the Disrup- 
 tion meekly acquiesced. The same authority had recognised 
 the spiritual standing of the ministers of Strathbogie after their 
 deposition, and the Church did not presume to disagree. The 
 Senators of the College of Justice intimated that a property 
 qualification was needed for a man to be a Presbyterian minister 
 in full standing, and once more the obedient Assembly said 
 Amen. 
 
 The judges may have been right, as a matter of fact, in the 
 view they took of the Church's constitution as Established. 
 Perhaps it was really the case that the Church, in accepting the 
 support of the State, had conceded to it a power in sacris 
 which was unsuspected until the great judicial decisions prior to 
 1843. But no evangelical Presbyterian could with any con- 
 sistency assent to such a concordat as justifiable in itself; and 
 when the actual state of the case was disclosed, there was only 
 one loyal course for him to take, and that was to surrender the 
 endowments which he had been enjoying, and endeavour to 
 fulfil his ecclesiastical mission with such other assistance as 
 might be available. This accordingly was what was done by 
 those who believed that for a Church to be useful it must be 
 free. 
 
154 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 7. Constituent Elements. — It would be to advance an absurd 
 claim on behalf of the Free Church to say that it carried out with 
 it all that was good in the Establishment. It had, to begin with, 
 a splendid set of leaders ; all over the country it was joined by 
 the men who had been taking an active part in works of refor- 
 mation ; and among the many other testimonies borne to its 
 position, it was accepted at once as the true Church of Scotland 
 by all the missionaries who had been sent out by the unbroken 
 Church to Jew or Gentile. But it would be folly to deny 
 that the power of sympathy brought into its ranks many who 
 had little understanding of its principles, and that not a few 
 were left behind whose piety and true-heartedness were 
 unquestionable. 
 
 In these facts lies the hope of ultimate reconciliation. The old 
 Church is not broken up into fragments which have no affinities 
 with one another. Each lump contains elements common to all. 
 And when the breath of a divine life melts the masses, what is 
 best in them all will coalesce. At the same time, there is no 
 mistaking how the great historical Church parties for the time 
 adjusted themselves. In the Established Church, as we see it 
 starting again on a new career in 1843, we behold the Moderate 
 party once more on the crown of the wave ; while in the Free 
 Church at the same date we see the Evangelicals — discomfited 
 as it appeared — driven out of the citadel into the open, yet in the 
 open maintaining a fight, the final issue of which still remains 
 to be determined. 
 
 8. Efforts at Eeadjustment. — That the stage of ' finality ' has not 
 yet been reached in the Presbyterian history of Scotland is mani- 
 fest ; and this has been recognised in the attempts which have 
 more than once been made since the Disruption to adjust the 
 Establishment to its now confessedly anomalous position. 
 
 One obvious mistake, however, has appeared in all these 
 efforts. Those who were called upon to advise the Crown have 
 utterly failed to realize the fact that those who were driven out 
 
CONFLICT AND DISRUPTION. 1 55 
 
 of the Establishment in former times by the fault of others, have 
 a moral right to be consulted now with regard to any fresh 
 alliance with the State. 
 
 In the last legislative effort the blundering was peculiarly 
 conspicuous. Not only was it assumed that the only considera- 
 tion to be thought of was the strengthening of the one section of 
 the ancient Church which happens to retain possession of the 
 endowments (which was a most unstatesmanlike idea), but the 
 reforms proposed were at once absurdly unsuited in their own 
 nature to the parties for whose benefit they were intended, and, 
 in their avowed design and mode of presentation, were fitted to 
 provoke and irritate conscientious Nonconformists instead of 
 conciliating them. 
 
 Dr. Cook and Dr. Robertson of Ellon, who moved the acts 
 rescissory in the first Assembly after the Disruption, were the 
 natural successors of Principal Robertson and Dr. Hill. These 
 leaders — the men of 1843 — nave passed away, and their places 
 have been filled by others who so far differ from them that they 
 have taken on the colour of the time. But there can be no 
 question about this, that it is virtually the same party — the 
 Moderate party — which is still in power. There has not been 
 within the past generation any such new ' evangelical revival ' in 
 the Established Church as to suggest that the tide has turned. 
 Many individual ministers are Evangelicals, just as was the case 
 in the end of last century. But the prevailing current was still 
 that which swept the Non-Intrusionists into the wilderness, when 
 in 1874, the Church had' offered to it the extraordinary boon of 
 the abolition of patro?iage. The offer was a sort of anachronism. 
 What distinguished the Moderates of old time was their dislike 
 to popular election. For the sake of patronage they had broken 
 up the Church and risked the Establishment. And now there 
 seemed something absurdly grotesque in the idea that they 
 should be rewarded for their fidelity by getting what they had 
 fought against to the death. 
 
 Unfortunately, however, the humorous side of the transaction 
 
I5 6 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 was not the only one which arrested attention. An irritating 
 element was introduced into the affair by the circumstance 
 (which there was no attempt made to conceal) that the ancient 
 principles of the party had been sacrificed for proselytizing 
 purposes. No effort was made to combine all the Presbyterian 
 Churches, as such, in an endeavour to secure a new concordat 
 from the State ; but a colourable imitation was made of the 
 banners of the nonconforming bodies in the hope of attracting 
 individual members of these bodies into the Establishment. In 
 other words, the idea of recognising the historical standing of 
 the Free and United Presbyterian Churches was not enter- 
 tained, but a device was resorted to with the view of breaking 
 up these Churches by the process of gradual absorption. 
 
 A scheme like this could not but fail. Even had it been 
 essentially perfect in all respects, it would have broken down, 
 because of its unattractive history. But it has not been recog- 
 nised as satisfactory in itself by either of the Churches most 
 concerned. The old system of lay patronage has indeed been 
 abolished, but what remains is not the ' right which appertains 
 to the Christian people to elect their own ministers,' but a civil 
 right, conferred by Act of Parliament upon a selected con- 
 stituency which includes adherents as well as communicants, 
 and whose powers are limited to a given time. Besides, the old 
 difficulty of the two jurisdictions remains as before. It is still the 
 case that the Church cannot, without the leave of the State, give 
 to any Scottish minister the full presbyterial power to rule as 
 well as teach. And the law is still unchallenged which makes 
 the House of Lords the supreme arbiter in all causes, civil and 
 ecclesiastical. Of course those who are satisfied with the 
 Establishment as at present constituted have something to say 
 for themselves. They can argue that they have universal suf- 
 frage in the Church as well as in the State, and that, as events 
 have proved, a nonconforming body even is not safe from the 
 encroachments of civil courts. But there is the ready reply, (i) that 
 (apart from other things) the equal vote of an adherent is a novelty 
 
CONFLICT AND DISRUPTION. 157 
 
 in church experience, and (2) that, while it is quite true even of a 
 Free Church that it may be harassed by the secular power, that 
 Church can always save itself from complicity in the intrusion by 
 refusing to condone it. We are not responsible for the misconduct 
 of another, if we protest against that misconduct. We are so 
 far responsible when we wink at it, and accept favours on the 
 distinct understanding that it is to be winked at. Of all safe- 
 guards against mistakes of administration in a Church, the worst 
 practically is that of submitting its spiritual sentences to be 
 reviewed by a civil judge. But whether that be the case or no, no 
 Church, it is held, has any right to surrender its freedom to any 
 power outside ; and it is just as irrational to argue that because 
 liberty of conscience is not allowed in Spain no individual 
 should try to assert it, as it is to say of a Church that the State 
 does not recognise its independence, and therefore it should 
 cease to claim it. 
 
 9. The Scottish Churches. — In 1847 the United Secession and 
 Relief Churches joined, and took the name of the United 
 Presbyterian Church. This is now a powerful and well-com- 
 pacted body, with nearly 180,000 communicants. It has a good 
 hold on all the great centres of population, and is notably 
 vigorous in the carrying on of missionary operations abroad. 
 
 The Free Church, which started with 470 ministers, has now 
 1050, with as many congregations. Its communicants number 
 about 300,000, and its income is much larger than that of any 
 other denomination in Scotland. Its missions, too, are main- 
 tained on a great scale in India, Africa, and the New Hebrides. 
 Two nonconforming bodies have united with it since the Disrup- 
 tion—the Original Seceders and the Cameronians. 
 
 The Established Church claims to have over 500,000 com- 
 municants, but it has been demonstrated that this must be an 
 over-estimate, and that is confirmed by the census which has 
 been taken in many parts of the country. Everywhere it is 
 shown that while it continues to be the largest individual sect, at 
 
158 SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 least in the lowlands, its worshippers are certainly far fewer in 
 number than those of the Free and United Presbyterian Churches 
 combined. 
 
 Besides these three bodies, which, between them, occupy the 
 land most fully, there are many other sects. In certain districts 
 there are to be found some remains of the indigenous Romanism 
 of the country, rising like the roots of ancient forest trees in a 
 modern clearing ; and to these have been added, chiefly by 
 immigration from Ireland, so many accessions that Popery is 
 now represented in Scotland by more than 300,000 souls. Epis- 
 copacy has also gathered strength. It, too, has been largely 
 recruited from outside — from England. In fact, though there 
 are certain things about it which connect it in a peculiar way 
 with our Scottish past, it bears to this day many of the marks 
 of an English exotic. Yet it is growingly influential. A large 
 proportion of the gentry have attached themselves to it. It is 
 still the custom among our better classes either to send their 
 children for education across the border, or to those schools 
 nearer home which are conducted on English models. And 
 now, as formerly, its ornate services, with other things, attract 
 the young and the would-be fashionable. This is not the place 
 to say a word about the merits or demerits of modern Episcopacy. 
 But we may allow ourselves to give expression to the conviction 
 that the nation's truest interests will be best conserved by a 
 revived devotion to our national Presbyterianism. 
 
 Apart from these larger denominations, there are not a few 
 others which, together, make up a considerable section of the 
 population. The healing of breaches is seldom so complete as 
 to leave no splinters behind, and though the Covenanters and 
 Original Seceders joined the Free Church in mass, there 
 remained outside a few congregations of each, which still pro- 
 fess to uphold their ancient banners. The Congregationalists, 
 also, are in some force. The Baptists have several congregations. 
 And there are Wesleyans and others to illustrate the almost 
 infinite variety of religious opinion which prevails in the world. 
 
CONFLICT AND DISRUPTION. 1 59 
 
 Nor, however, must we forget to add, that beyond all the Churches 
 lies an outfield which is filled by a teeming multitude of persons 
 who have forsaken Christian ordinances altogether. It is pos- 
 sible that during the present generation there may take place 
 another readjustment in the relations of the leading Churches. 
 But nothing of that kind will be of the highest value if it does 
 not issue in the reclamation of the waste places. 
 
 10. Where is the Succession? — It is interesting to notice in 
 connection with the history of a Church what constitutes its 
 ' Succession ' — by what characteristic marks it can be identified 
 from age to age. It is evident that ' Establishment' or 'Non- 
 Establishment' is not one of these marks. From 1661 to 1689 
 there was a national Establishment, but the Church of Sharp 
 and Claverhouse was not the Church of Knox and Henderson. 
 The Church of Scotland, lying in the line of the succession, was 
 then in the wilderness, and William of Orange recognised the 
 fact when at the Revolution he brought the covenanting remnant 
 to the front, and reconstituted the Establishment round them. 
 
 1. One mark was certainly Presbyterianism. The Reforma- 
 tion was achieved by Presbyters. The Presbyterian system was 
 developed in the First Book of Discipline. And although, once 
 and again, the Church assumed an Episcopal guise, the transfor- 
 mation was always submitted to under compulsion, and whenever 
 the pressure was withdrawn it reverted to its original form. 
 
 2. Another mark was evangelical teaching. No doubt there 
 were times when very uncertain sounds were heard from the 
 pulpits of the Church of Scotland. But its earliest standards 
 were evangelical — so are the Confession of Faith and its Cate- 
 chisms ; and although among its divines there have been not a 
 few men like Blair and M'Gill, the national instinct has never 
 failed to recognise ' the succession ' in preachers of the type of 
 Chalmers . 
 
 3. A third mark was a love for spiritual liberty and inde- 
 pendence. But for this the Scottish people could have retained 
 
l6o SCOTTISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 no independent religious ideas or forms of their own. Again 
 and again, in successive generations, they have been subjected 
 to assaults upon their freedom — from Rome, from England, from 
 Kings, from Parliaments, from Churchmen, from Statesmen ; 
 and it is not surprising that under this kind of training there 
 was developed a sturdy self-reliance, which has given a distinct 
 and perfectly recognisable colouring to the historical Church of 
 the country. You see it wherever it asserts its right to hold 
 its own against tyranny in any form. It disappears when there 
 is manifested a facile disposition to submit to and be moulded 
 by others. 
 
 4. A fourth mark was the strength of its popular sympathies. 
 It held high views of the Church as a divine institution. It 
 held equally high views of the position which was occupied by 
 each individual member. The Moderate idea of the Christian 
 people was that they were so many sheep for whom a shepherd 
 behoved to be chosen. The characteristic idea of the Scottish 
 Church is that they are citizens in a commonwealth, qualified by 
 character and education to choose a teacher for themselves. 
 The whole constitutional framework of Presbyterianism is 
 democratic. Every part of the system is worked so as to call 
 forth the energies and responsibilities of the individual ; and the 
 course of 'the succession' can be traced quite clearly in the 
 degree of respect which the different parties paid to the voice of 
 the people. 
 
 i Ubi Christus, ibi Ecclesia* is the oldest and truest Church 
 mark in the world. We may extend it so far and say : if you 
 want, at the present time, to find the Church of Scotland — the 
 Church of the Reformation, and of the Covenants — the Church 
 of Knox, and Melville, and Rutherford, and Boston, and the 
 Erskines — you must seek it not exclusively in any one denomina- 
 tion, but among the membership of the various fragments into 
 which the ancient national institute has been broken. Wherever 
 the marks indicated appear, there will be met the life- stream 
 which we hope and believe will yet cover the whole land. 
 
CONFLICT AND DISRUPTION. i6l 
 
 1. How did the Veto Act come to be proposed ? 
 
 2. What were the terms of that Act? 
 
 3. Did the Church prosper after it passed? if so, in what way ? 
 
 4. What was the first question raised in the conflict ? 
 
 5. How would you say that this question was debateable? 
 
 6. What neiv claims were started by the civil courts ? 
 
 7. Quote the words of the Lord President. 
 
 8. Give illustrations of what this meant. 
 
 9. What power did the Court of Session claim at Auchterarder, at 
 
 Lethendy, at Strathbogie ? 
 
 10. How did the Church feel under these assaults on her liberty ? 
 
 1 1 . Did the State give relief? 
 
 12. IVJio were t resp07isible for the Government at this time ? and 
 
 how did they come to look at things ? 
 
 13. What were the principles at stake ? Indicate them. 
 
 14. Why was a Disruption inevitable? 
 
 15. What did Lord Cockburn think of the Disruption ? 
 
 16. What did the Established Church Assembly do after the Evan- 
 
 gelicals had left it ? 
 
 1 7. What did these Acts imply ? 
 
 18. To what important principle did the Established Church give 
 
 assent ? 
 
 19. What historical party triumphed in 1843 ? 
 
 20. Have we now seen the last stage of Scottish history ? 
 
 21. What efforts have been made since the Disruption to readjust 
 
 things ? 
 
 22. Have these succeeded ? 
 
 23. If not — why not? 
 
 24. Describe the present condition of the several Scottish Churches. 
 
 25. What constitutes the Succession in any Church ? 
 
 26. What are the leading characteristics of the Church of Scotland? 
 
 27. Where is now the life-stream ? 
 
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