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the French Revolution. After this he went into the country, and returned to town in a declining state of health. "Some of his friends urged him to reply to Mr. Burke's late publication," which attempt he very prudently declined; and in the following spring he was seized with a complaint which quickly brought him to his grave. Here we would readily close our strictures upon him, not wishing to cast reproach upon his memory, or even to revive it. We abhor the principles of Dr. Price, but have no hostility to the man; nor would he have occupied one moment of our attention, had not this attempt been made to hold him up as an object of imitation and applause. Notwithstanding the best exertions of the Doctor and his friends, we still enjoy the blessings of the English Church and State; and his liberal and enlightened doctrines have not yet been generally received.

"We still fear God; we look up with awe to kings; with affection to parliaments; with duty to magistrates; with reverence to priests, and with respect to nobility. Why? because when such ideas are brought before our minds, it is natural to be so affected; because all other feelings are false and spurious, and tend to corrupt our minds, to vitiate our primary morals, to render us unfit for rational liberty; and by teaching us a servile, licentious, and abandoned insolence, to be our low sport for a few holidays, to make us perfectly fit for, and justly deserving of slavery, through the whole course of our lives." Burke's Reflections, p. 167.

ART. IV. The History of the Church of Scotland, from the Establishment of the Reformation to the Revolution: illustrating a most interesting Period of the Political History of Britain. By George Cook, D.Ď. Minister of Lawrencekirk. 3 vols. 8vo. Longman and Co. London; Constable and Co. Edinburgh. 1815.

THIS is a very able, and, upon the whole, a very candid work, embracing a great variety of most important facts relative to the religious and political state of Scotland, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Throughout his whole book, the author shews himself completely superior to all the narrow feelings of party spirit; incapable alike of concealing the errors and ferocity which distinguished the founders of his church, and of blaming their antagonists except where they were manifestly in the wrong. Aware of the powerful prejudices which actuated the leading characters, in those unhappy times to which his history refers, he never finds fault but with tenderness and moderation;

and

and in every instance where he is compelled to disapprove, he seems more disposed to lament over the frailties of human na ture, than to indulge in invective, or to multiply expressions of condemnation. In exhibiting the jealousies, the hatred, the crimes and follies of men who strove with one another even unto the death, and who, when they were in their turn invested with power, exercised against each other the very same violence and cruelties which both loudly and justly condemned only when they were forced to submit to them, Dr. Cook appears to have made. it his object to impress upon his readers that strong passions uniformly blunt the moral feelings and pervert the judgment, rather than to impute to particular churches intolerant maxims or unchristian principles. Like a discerning historian and an upright man, he imputes to the times what the times really produced; he appreciates motives with candour and impartiality; he paints rebellion in its true colours; never justifies, under the specious pretext of religious liberty, an armed opposition to lawful government where conscience was respected; and he is never found to eulogize arbitrary measures, merely because they were resorted to in behalf of a particular faction.

These are high recommendations in a writer of church history, and they will infallibly carry down his name with applause to the latest generations; but it gives us pain to add, that such are not the qualities which will recommend his work to the patronage of his contemporaries. To succeed, in these days, an author must sacrifice every thing to party views; he must call the ferocious rebel an enlightened patriot, the intolerant bigot, an evangelical christian, and the hypocritical ambitious traitor, the true friend of his country. He must conceal facts when it does not suit his purpose to bring them forward; he must palliate notorious delinquencies; and play the sophist in support of a favourite class of political opinions or of ecclesiastical measures. In short, he must carry all the feelings which stimulate the factious, and characterize the lovers of innovation, into the detail of historical events, into the abstract discussions of moral science, and even into the fictions of poetry and romance. Some of Dr. Cook's countrymen understand all this better than he seems to do; and, at the same time, appear much more willing to comply with the prevailing taste, and to purchase present popularity on whatever terms it may be had.

As to the literary merits of the work before us, we have merely to say, that the language is in general classical and vigorous, never overloaded with ornament, and never deficient in the particular species of eloquence which is most suitable for narration, We marked indeed, in the course of reading, two or three scot ticisms, as well as a few sentences violently inverted for the sake

of

of sound. We leave these trifles, however, to enter upon an analysis of the work itself; and in this we shall follow the traiu' of events in the order of their chronology.

In the reign of James the Fifth, the more powerful barons of Scotland, who, under several of his predecessors, had successfully opposed themselves to the regal authority, began to prosecute measures for their own aggrandizement, with more concert and system than they had formerly observed. As the monarch united with the church in attempting to check the progress of the new opinions on the subject of religion, the pobles in subservience to their grand object, did not fail to encourage the reformers to propagate their tenets, and thus to weaken at once the influence of the hierarchy and of the crown. This view alone might perhaps account for the patronage which the preachers received from such of the nobility as had combined to limit the royal prerogative; and the prospects which very soon opened to them of deriving a great addition to their revenues from the patrimony of the Church, will sufficiently explain the eagerness with which some of them seconded every effort to strip and demolish the ancient priesthood. James was, in the mean while, counselled by those, who either were ignorant of the real state of public feeling, or were enemies of the church, to have recourse to a system of policy, which tended, in the most direct and summary manner, to undermine the power of the old establishment, and to surround with popular sympathy and respect, the cause of the reformers. He subjected to martyrdom several of their leaders; bringing thereby upon the clergy the odium and suspicion which never fail to be directed against excessive severity, and, at the same time, inducing the people to examine into those views of religion which could so powerfully elevate the mind as to defy death, or to triumph amid the most dreadful sufferings. At his premature decease, accordingly, he left the kingdom in a state of the most deplorable anarchy, and bequeathed to his unfortunate daughter an inheritance from which she was doomed to reap nothing but unmixed misery, calumny, and reproach.

Under the regency of Arran and of the queen-dowager, the protestants, amid various vicissitudes, continued to gain ground; and when Mary in person assumed the sovereignty, she found the reformation so far advanced as very soon to render it expedient to make a legal provision for the preachers. The attachment which she naturally felt for the form of religion in which she had been educated, and the ferocious and unchristian opposition which she experienced from Knox and the protestant lords, occasioned more than once a slight reaction on the part of her friends; but the artful and insidious conduct of her brother, afterwards

VOL V. JANUARY, 1816.

L

afterwards earl of Murray, rendered ineffectual every plan that was adopted either to consolidate her throne, or to obtain for her the comforts of devotional exercises even in her private chapel. Her imprisonment at Lochlevin too, and her subsequent flight into England, having in process of time secured for Murray the regency of the kingdom, he was thus enabled to give a kind of legal sanction and establishment to the reformation; and it is at this epoch, accordingly, that Dr. Cook takes up the history of the Church of Scotland*. Indeed it is very clearly proved by the whole of their conduct, that the congregation, as they were called, uniformly identified their interests with those of the Regent, and it is on this account that they laboured so zealously to promote his ambitious views, by stirring up the people against their queen, and by arming their adherents to oppose her restoration. Murray, however, had more than one party to manage the ministers, on the one hand, petitioned for the temporalities of the popish church, and the lords of the congregation were determined to hold fast the ample share of them which they had already appropriated: the latter, however, being the more powerful body, were favoured with the Regent's patronage, and obtained his sanction for their rapacious exactions. In his situation, perhaps, it would have proved a hazardous policy to attempt a transference of the immense patrimony of the Church to the popular and rebellious ministers; but Murray, although this was one of the conditions stipulated to gain their countenance to his measures, shewed no sincere wish to meet their views, and he allowed several years to elapse without making one effort to ameliorate their wretched condition. Even Knox seems to have been greatly irritated and disgusted by his hollow and temporizing conduct; for, in a letter written during this period, he complained to one of his friends, that "he was already dead to all civil affairs, and that his life to him was bitter." Still the dread of popery prevailed over all their other feelings, and the Regent was supported by the reformers, as the great antagonist of Mary, and bulwark of their cause.

At this epoch, the constitution of the Scottish Church was a species of episcopacy; the power, and some of the functions, of the episcopal order being vested in superintendents both lay and clerical; which superintendents, at the same time, were responsible for their conduct to the General Assemblies, and even to

*He published, some years ago, a history of the reformation in Scotland, with which we have no concern; but was reviewed by our precedessors, and praised by them for the same spirit and candour which is displayed in the work before us.

the

the inferior judicatories of the Church. An assembly, however, being held in 1568, the outlines were drawn up of a system for conducting their public business with greater decency and subordination, a law was passed, specifying who should in future be entitled to sit and vote in that supreme judicatory, and by whom they were to be elected. It was ordained, that none should have voice in these assemblies, but superintendents, visitors of churches, (who had the powers without the titles of superintendents), commissioners of shires and universities, and such ministers as the superintendents should choose in their dioceses and synods, being men of knowledge, and able to decide upon the subjects proposed for their consideration. This was an important step, observes Dr. Cook, towards the settlement of the Church. It marked out the constitution of the great organ of ecclesiastical law; it was admirably calculated to secure the assistance of the most intelligent of the ministry, while it gave a very powerful ins fluence to the superintendents who would naturally make choice of such of their clergy as they had reason to believe were disposed to preserve the form of government which Knox had introduced.

Another law was passed which still further augmented the power of the superintendents. It was enacted, that nothing should be discussed in the General Assembly which the superin tendents might or ought to determine in their synods; and thus the superintendent with his synod was entrusted with the same authority which was afterwards committed to presbyteries. At this early and unconfirmed state of their polity, however, they failed not to commence persecution. It was decreed by the same assembly, that papists continuing obstinate should be excommunicated, and Knox's form of excommunication was accordingly revised and sanctioned. Subsequent to this, nothing very material to the interests of the reformed took place, until the assassination of the Regent: which event is recorded by our author in the following manner.

"He had been frequently warned, that his enemies, unable to oppose him in honourable warfare, had resolved upon his death; but he listened with too much incredulity to these cau tions, and he fell a sacrifice to his neglect of them. Hamilton, of Bothwellhaugh, followed him to Linlithgow, where he was to remain for a night; and next morning, when he was com mencing his journey to Edinburgh, he was wounded by a bullet fired by Hamilton from the house of the Archbishop of St. Andrews,

* This expression may lead the unwary reader to suppose either that the Primate was then residing in Linlithgow, or that it was the

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