The Episcopal incumbents who dispossessed the Presbyterian Character of pastors were, generally speaking, 'Hireling wolves whose gospel is their maw.' This terrible indictment is endorsed by friends and foes alike. Bishop 3 the Episcopal clergy. Memorial. Gilbert Burnet's verdicts and generalisations were founded on sufficient data and personal experience of the men and times. Early in 1666, then the young minister of Saltoun, he issued A Memorial of Burnet's Diverse Grievances and Abuses in this Church, copies of which he sent to some of the bishops. He animadverted severely on the evils of the time, the corruptions of the clergy, and the vices of the gentry and the masses. He accused the prelates of being non-resident, seldom preaching, becoming politicians, acting with intolerance and pride, and sacrilegiously peculating Church property. He blamed many of the regular and indulged clergy for Simoniacal practices, entering the Church for gain, for being haughty, worldly-minded frequenters of taverns, who worried the people with long preachments' of 'mean stuff,' neglected the Communion, made dull, disorderly prayers, and gave out a few lines of psalms to 'slow, long tunes.' He timed the downfall of the masses to the advent of the bishops: 'At your coming in there hath been a deluge of wickedness, that hath almost quite overflowen the land; scoffing at religion, swearing, drunkenness, and uncleanness can not but meet you where ever yow are.' For this plain speaking the young minister barely escaped deposition on the motion of Sharp himself.* 1 Laud. Pap., ii. 207. 2 Burnet, i. 426. 3 Misc. Scot. Hist., ii. 340-58. Burnet, Hist., i. 387-9; Suppl., 472; Clarke and Foxcroft, A Life of Gilbert Burnet, 62-8 (Cambridge, 1907). Character of clergy. On the other hand, the outed ministers and evicted rebels no the persecuted doubt retained a large portion of the old Adam while on their wet and weary wanderings ever facing death; and their freedom from the spirit and practice of revenge would have testified to a special accession of supernatural power. We shall find one exasperated 'Stickit Minister,' James Mitchell, drawing a bad shot at Archbishop Sharp; another pietist, Skene, justifying the poisoning of the balls of his blunderbuss; the hunters of merciless Carmichael murderously grounding the very Primate on Magus Moor; and a few cases of the shedding of the blood of soldiers, curates, and informers, in open fray, midnight raids, and tavern brawls; but these indefensible acts, even were all reckoned to be blots on the fair escutcheon of the Covenant, are out of all ratio to the bloodshed and excesses laid to the account of the ruthless suppressors of the Covenanters. Bearing in mind the rudeness of the age, the illegal acts of the King and his subordinates, and the provocation received, one is astonished that retaliation was not oftener resorted to, that offences were so infrequent, and that the persecuted exhibited so much Christian restraint. There is scarcely Corrupt rulers. a parallel to it. Rulers who demand good subjects must afford good examples. Charles II., Buckingham, and Lauderdale would have corrupted a 'Pagan suckled in a creed outworn.' Their infamous associates appear more like the flowers of The Newgate Calendar than the responsible governors of a civilised state and supporters of a Christian Church. The modern detractor of the Covenanters and eulogiser of their oppressors, who calls such men his 'cheerful friends,' keeps strange company among the dead.1 We shall see these votaries of Vice sitting at the fountainhead of every purifying stream that flowed through Scottish life, save one, and pouring in their vile poison, which could not fail to make a nauseous taste in the mouths of what poor clergy and citizens were left in the miserable land. The stream of influence that welled out of the Covenant they were not allowed to vitiate. The struggle was not for a form of Church government merely, for the maintenance of the 1 Lang, Hist. of Scot., iii. 305. Covenanting nostrums of illiterate fanatics, or for the justification of obstinate demagogues. The fight was for freedom, morality, virtue, and religion. No Aims of candid student can evade the fact that agitators like Guthrie, Cargill, agitators. Cameron, and Renwick, and fighters like Hamilton, Balfour, Hackston, Paton and others, in order to save their country, families, and innocents, from corrupters, seducers, and destroyers, resisted unto blood that Government, which they considered to be an agency of Satan. These purists of the Covenant, at least, do not figure in the records of scandal. Yet because the incorruptible ministers manfully denounced those Royalist scapegraces, and maintained a high standard of morality and religion, they have been frequently discredited by those who are ignorant of the vicious environments in which they contended. In these dark strata were being generated the disturbing movements which enflamed a once peaceable community. The Presbyterian ministers, by their honest ministries, pure lives, and creditable writings, form a contrast to other leaders of this epoch, and these attainments rightly gained for them the esteem in which the populace generally held them. According to Burnet, although they were 'a sour and supercilious people, their faults were not so conspicuous.' Our researches prove that their antagonists seldom 'streaked honey in their mouths.' An impartial account of the lives of the persecutors will always form a sufficiently black framework wherein to set the picture of many saintly lives offered for Christ's Kingdom, Crown, and Covenants.1 very 1 For an account of the literary men living between 1625 and 1690, and of their works, see Appendix i. in this volume. CHAPTER XXII in Scotland in 1661. RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH Various parties THE plot was now laid for the final assault on Scottish liberties and for the realisation of the dream of the Stuart kings of Britain. The times were auspicious. The populace was tired of a rigid religion which conferred no temporal benefits; the gentry, bankrupt, servile, and growing habituated to English manners and customs, hung around the Commissioner's throne clamouring for ratifications of all sorts, knowing that to oppose the Crown was to frustrate their own designs; while the clergy were divided into two main classes-trueblue Presbyterians who saw a jailer haunting every church, and a party who were of the opinion of Robert Leighton, that the external apparatus of the faith was of little importance so long as the faith itself was professed, some even approving of the principle by which Gavin Young, minister of Ruthwell, held his charge happily through all the changes between 1617 and 1671, and thus expressed by him: 'Wha wad quarrel wi' their brose for a mote in them?' Shortly after the Parliament of 1661 began its reconstructive work, the leaders of the Church in Edinburgh pointed out to Middleton that some of the new Rescissory Acts abrogated statutes legalising the Covenants and Westminster Standards, and also other Acts enumerating indictable offences, and they overtured Parliament to renew these indispensable laws.1 The Presbytery of Edinburgh sent a Committee to Middleton to appeal to him to constrain the legislature to delay considering a statute so revolutionary as the Rescissory Act was. Middleton politely cajoled the deputation until he got time to 1 Wodrow, i. 110, position to have the statute passed. Professor David Dickson, also sent to Clerical opremonstrate, was cavalierly received and told by the Commissioner reconstruction that he was not afraid of papers by ministers, a remark which drew of Church. from Dickson the biting retort-'he well knew his Grace was no coward since the Bridge of Dee.' Impolitic then was this rejoinder, which raked up memories of the time when Middleton fought for the Covenant. Middleton was not to be moved. The ministers next addressed Lauderdale, whose love to Mother-Church they praised, hoping through his intervention with the King to have the incoming tide turned back by means of a General Assembly, which they desired to be convened for the settlement of peace. Lauderdale, too, was a broken reed. No longer an advocate for Covenants, he now viewed Presbyterianism as a temporary expedient. Besides, this statesman had a correspondent in Sharp, who disavowed the resolutions of Douglas, Dickson, and Wood, and pressed a conjunction of Lauderdale and Middleton 'for good to poor Scotland,' while he himself in hypocrisy prayed: 'Let me bear the punishment maybe intended for Mr. Guthrie, who hath made the frame of our religion heer to be nothing else but a contexture of treason and sedition.' The King was personally indifferent, except to the democratic aspect of the Church question. Fenwick. In April the Synod of Glasgow and Ayr met and considered the situation. William Guthrie, minister of Fenwick, failed to persuade Guthrie of all his brethren to transmit a suitable address to the Crown which he had prepared; dissent on the ground of inexpediency and inopportuneness being expressed by James Hamilton, Cambusnethan; Robert Wallace, Barnweill; and James Ramsay, Linlithgow (representative from Lothian), afterwards the Bishops of Galloway, the Isles, and Dunblane respectively. A milder declaration, emphasising adherence was unanimously agreed to, even by the Episcopal dissentients. They adjourned this meeting, and on assembling again found themselves proclaimed as an illegal convocation. to Presbyterianism, The Synod of Fife also met to prepare a petition craving the Synod of Fife, Commissioner to have an Act passed establishing the Scots Church, and April 1661. VOL. II. 1 Sharp to Lauderdale, 25th April 1661: Laing MSS., 784. R |