into a false position, and neither was willing to recede. It is certain that in Ebenezer Erskine's sermon there was nothing worthy of deposition. It is questionable if there was anything deserving of ecclesiastical censure; but even supposing there was, it had been far more prudent for the members of the synod to have passed it in silence, and simply taken care that their plain-spoken brother had never a like opportunity again of abusing them to their face. Scotch ministers had long been accustomed to great boldness of speech; and if a growing refinement was beginning to revolt against such pulpit license, it might surely have been checked by gentler measures. disease was chronic, the medicine should have been mild.

The

But there was yet another blunder on the part of the Church, and the last was worse than the first. Erskine and his friends bowed themselves to the censure of the Assembly, and only desired to comfort their consciences by lodging a protest. The Assembly should have overlooked the protest, and let the matter end. It may be said that it was an act of high contumacy-that in the protest there was an open defiance of ecclesiastical authority. It is quite true; but even General Assemblies should make some allowance for irritation or obstinacy. What though these men were not yet convinced they were in the wrong? what though they declared they would continue to denounce laws which they thought to be iniquitous? Were they not punished already; and was a further stretch of authority likely either to convince or to silence them? The Marrow Men lodged a protest equally defiant; but the Assembly wisely overlooked it, and the Marrow controversy soon died away.

Acts of Assembly are not articles of communion. Every law written in the minute-book of the Church is not to be believed and venerated as a chapter in the Confession of Faith. These arguments of Erskine are unanswerable. Men may remain in the Church, and yet find fault with the Church. Infallibility is not claimed; the possibility of mistake is admitted. There is as much liberty of fault-finding in our republican Church as in our monarchical State. All this is true, but at the same time, moderation of language and respect for the opinions of others are at least to be expected from a preacher of that gospel which makes charity the first of the virtues; and it must be allowed there are expressions in Erskine's sermon which cannot be justified on the score of propriety, as they cannot by the facts of the case. It is doubt

ful if the Church of Scotland ever had her parishes provided with ministers under a more liberal measure than the Act of 1732. It is difficult to show the essential difference between the Act of Assembly 1732 and the Act of Parliament 1690. It is impossible to prove that purely popular election was ever known in Scotland, and yet Erskine claimed it as the divine right of the Christian people. And because some of his brethren differed from him on these points, he compared them to the Jews who had rejected Christ, and declared that their act had no authority, as it wanted the authority of the Son of God. Ought such words to have been spoken, or, if spoken, ought they not to have been withdrawn? And even afterwards, when the Commission appointed a committee to confer with Erskine about his protest, might he not have made some concession? and is it not known that a very small concession would have saved him?1 It is to be feared that pride and passion mingle in such matters more largely than we are willing to allow. It is to be feared that obstinacy sometimes takes the name of principle, and cheats even ourselves. The Assembly would not recede; Erskine would not recede; and so the schism took place.

The four Seceders immediately constituted themselves into a presbytery, and shortly afterwards published their "First Testimony to the Government, Worship, and Discipline of the Church." They narrate the steps which led to their expulsion; they sketch the history of the Church in her reforming and declining periods, and bewail the departure of Covenanting times; they charge the Church with having broken down her constitution, with harbouring heretics, with forcing hirelings on the flock, and filling up the full measure of her sin by stopping the mouths of faithful men who testified against her. The Church had no sooner expelled the four protesters than she began to repent of what she had done. Erskine and his brethren were men of irreproachable character; they had friends who sympathised with them in every synod and every presbytery; the people everywhere regarded them as the

1 The proposed concession was put into this shape:-"If the next General Assembly shall declare that it was not meant by the Act of the last Assembly to deny or take away the privilege and duty of ministers to testify against defections, then we shall be at liberty and willing to with. draw our protest against the said Act of Assembly; and, particularly, we reserve to ourselves the liberty of testifying against the Act of Assembly 1732 on all proper occasions." After a night's deliberation, the four brethren refused to subscribe this. See "First Testimony," pp. 29, 30.

champions of their rights; their congregations clung to them all the closer that they now regarded them as confessors and martyrs; and when the ministers who had been appointed to intimate their sentence from their pulpits appeared, an excited multitude forcibly withstood them. A violent reaction began.1

In May 1734 the Assembly met, and at once began to put on sackcloth for the sins of its predecessors. It repealed the Act of 1730" Discharging the Recording of Reasons of Dissent," and the Act of 1732 "Anent the Method of Planting vacant Churches," on the ground that they had both been passed contrary to the provisions of the Barrier Act. It empowered the Synod of Perth and Stirling to receive Ebenezer Erskine and his adherents back into the Church. It put upon record, for the satisfaction of all, that ministerial freedom was not to be held as restrained by the decision of the preceding

1 The feeling against patronage and in favour of the four Seceders was peculiarly strong in the Synod of Perth and Stirling, where the mischief had begun. In the spring of 1734 it agreed upon an address to be presented to the approaching Assembly, the spirit of which may be gathered from the following extracts. It begins: As it is agreed upon by all the members of this Church, that the yoke of patronage is a heavy grievance, which hath been complained of in the several periods wherein it was in force since the Reformation, and by the rigorous execution of it, especially of late, so much the foundation of the present confusions and divisions among us, and like to spread further discontent and dissatisfaction, both in Church and State, throughout the whole nation." The synod then proposes that the Assembly should petition the king and parliament for its removal, and also that it should "testify and declare its dissatisfaction with all ministers and probationers who should accept of presentations." It further proposes that the Act of Assembly 1732, which had occasioned the schism, and the Act of 1730, anent dissents, should be repealed; that the Commission of Assembly should be restrained from such tyrannous procedure as it had recently been guilty of; and finally, that some effectual means should be employed for discouraging "the method of preaching that has of late too much obtained, by harangues of mere moral virtues, to the neglect of the great and substantive doctrines of Christianity, which has created so general a disgust among the hearers of the gospel." The synod then concludes-" And whereas we in this province are in a special manner touched and affected with the dismal consequences of the censures inflicted by the late Assembly, and Commission thereof, upon four worthy brethren of our number, we do most earnestly entreat the General Assembly that, as they regard the peace and quiet of this Church, and particularly the bounds of this province, they would, in their great wisdom, take the most prudent and mild methods in order to take off the said censures, and restore them again into ministerial communion with the Church, and free exercise of their functions in their respective charges. "" From this it is evident that when the synod began this matter, they never dreamt it would lead to such results.

Assembly; in other words, that ministers fond of declaiming against the defections of the Church and the backslidings of their brethren might do it with impunity. It appointed a deputation to proceed to London, and urge every argument to obtain the abolition of patronage.2

Never did Church so humble itself to obtain the return of its own children to its bosom. It seemed upon its bended knees to implore them to come back. It yielded up all that they asked. It repealed its own laws; it threw a slur upon its own procedure; it came down from its own high place in order to please them. They might now record their reasons of dissent from every decision of every court, with what longitude they chose. They might now speak out their minds as freely as they liked. No law henceforward limited the ministerial call to heritors and elders; nay, more, a deputation was on its way to London, to urge the removal of patronage entirely. Adding practice to profession, the Assembly annulled the proceedings of its Commission, which had placed a presentee at Auchtermuchty, in opposition to the wishes of both presbytery and people. Yet when the Synod of Perth and Stirling would restore the protestors to the Church, they refused to be restored.

It is understood that Wilson was willing to return, but that Erskine withstood him. We have Erskine's reasons for his conduct in a letter to the Presbytery of Stirling. "There is a great difference," says he, "betwixt a positive reformation, and a stop or sist given to a deformation." Some brethren call us to come in and help them against the current of defection. But now that the hand of Providence has taken us out of the current against which we were swimming, and set us upon the reformation ground by a solemn testimony and constitution, it would be vain for us to endanger ourselves by running into the current again, unless our reverend brethren who call for our help can persuade us that our so doing will turn the current, and save both them and ourselves.' "There is a difference to be made betwixt the Established Church of Scotland and the Church of Christ in Scotland; for I reckon that the last is in a great measure driven into the wilderness by the first. And since God in His adorable providence has led us into the wilderness with her, I judge it our duty to tarry with her for a while there, and to 1 See Acts of Assembly, year 1734. 2 Moncreiff's Life of Erskine, Appendix.

prefer her afflictions to all the advantages of a legal establishment." 1

Erskine could not deny that the original ground of his separation from the Church was removed. He could only plead general defection from the purity of Covenanting times; the current was against him—he was not sure he could stem it-he had no pledge for the future—he thought it better to abide on the high reforming ground where he stood. It appears from this to be certain that he found the outer regions of dissent a more pleasant place than some imagine them to be. It was something to be the leader of a movement-the founder of a sect. It was something to occupy holier ground than the rest of his countrymen. The true Church had gone out into the wilderness, and he had gone with her—that was a soothing thought. The people offered him their incensethat was peculiarly pleasing. There would be an awkwardness in going back. It was true the Church had bowed itself in the dust before him, and had re-sought him with tears, but still he would rather dwell like a Bedouin chief in the desert, than re-enter the cities of Pharaoh and be lost in the crowd.

The Church still continued to hope for the return of the Seceders. The Presbytery of Stirling kept its Moderator's chair vacant for some time, that Erskine might come and fill it. The Assembly of 1735 despatched a second deputation to London to pray for the abolition of patronage. The Assembly of 1736, animated by the same spirit, passed an act in which it was declared, that it was, and had been since the Reformation, a principle in the Church, that no minister should be intruded into any parish contrary to the will of the congregation, and that, therefore, all presbyteries should have a due regard to that principle in planting vacant churches.2 To manifest its soundness in doctrine as well as in discipline, this Assembly also passed an act enjoining all the ministers of the Word to insist continually upon the fundamental doctrines of Christianity.3

But all was in vain. The Seceders would not be won by kindness, as they had not been frightened by threats. Toward the end of 1736, they widened the gulf between them and the Church by publishing their "Judicial Testimony;" for they

1 Fraser's Life of Ebenezer Erskine. For a fuller exposition of the motives of the Seceders, see also their First and Second Testimonies; and their "Reasons for not acceding to the Established Church." 3 Ibid. p. 636,

2 Acts of Assembly, p. 641,