that any persons put in their place would be intruders. Last of all, in the bowels of the Lord Jesus Christ, they entreated all who regarded the Covenanted testimony of the Church of Scotland, and who desired to be found faithful, to come out from the judicatories, as they would not be partakers in their sins, and to lift up the standard of a judicial testimony for the borne-down truths of God, and for purging and planting the house of God, after the example of their worthy progenitors in 1638, believing that the set time for favouring Zion would come.1

The Assembly sat and heard all this abuse heaped upon itself. It must have required the levity of an Epicurean, or the apathy of a Stoic, to have heard it with patience. When their phials were empty, the Seceders were requested to withdraw, and when they were called again they did not compear. It was their last appearance at the bar of the Church. The libel was found relevant, and enough of it proved to infer deposition; but the Assembly, mindful of the injunction of the Great Vine-Dresser, "Spare it yet another year, peradventure may bear fruit," resolved to forbear passing any censure till its next meeting, peradventure the wanderers might yet return.2

it

The Associate Presbytery had not yet discovered the sinfulness of the Church's connection with the State. In no one of their Acts, Testimonies, or Declinatures, where every sin they could think of is laid at the door of the Church, is there the slightest whisper of such a sin as this. But, singular enough, the idea was being developed at this very period in another and very opposite quarter. Probably a majority of the Scottish clergy still counted themselves bound by the Covenants their grandfathers had sworn, and a common topic of pulpit discourse was the breach of these Covenant engagements. The Seceders especially had pleasure in such themes. This was now to be openly called in question, not upon legal, but upon high evangelical grounds. So early as 1725 the Rev. John Glas, minister of Tealing, a devoted pastor and an able man, began to preach against the Covenants, as incompatible with the spirit of the gospel dispensation and the sacred ights of conscience. Not satisfied with propounding his pinions from the pulpit, he published them in a pamphlet,

1 I have nearly copied, while I have abridged, this curious Act and Delinature.

2 Acts of Assembly, pp. 649-51,

which created a considerable noise, and drew forth several answers. His sentiments rested mainly upon a distinction which he drew between the Old and New Testament Churches. He argued that under the old Jewish economy the commonwealth and the Church were identical, and that to be a member of the commonwealth was to be a member of the Church. But the New Testament Church, he maintained, was a purely spiritual community, gathered out of all nations, and having no connection with the kingdoms of the world. His opinions, in fact, pointed to Independency and Voluntaryism. He was brought before the Courts of the Church, and after a lengthened trial he was deposed by the Commission in 1730.

About the same time he published his "King of Martyrs," in which his peculiar opinions are more fully developed. He also removed from Tealing to Dundee, where a few admirers gathered around him and formed the first Glasite congregation in Scotland. In 1733 he removed to Perth, where a small meeting-house was built for him. Besides ascribing a purely spiritual character to the New Testament dispensation, thus rising in true religious conception far above all their compeers, the Glasites revived some of the primitive New Testament practices. They celebrated the sacrament of the Supper weekly; they kept love-feasts; they saluted each other with the kiss of charity; they washed each other's feet; they refrained from things strangled, and from blood. It is not often that Wodrow jokes, but in one of his last letters he says of Glas— "The poor man is still going on in his wildnesses, and comical things are talked of his public rebukes for defects and excesses in the Christian kiss he has introduced to his meetings.”1

But Glas was a good and worthy man, and the Church, at this period, was not disposed to be harsh in its discipline. The Synod of Angus and Mearns memorialized the Assembly of 1739 in favour of a man whom they esteemed, notwithstanding his novelties, and the same Assembly which prepared the way for the deposition of the Erskines, opened up a way for the restoration of Glas. By a curious but praiseworthy act they restored him to the character of a minister of the gospel of Christ, but declared at the same time that he was not to be esteemed a minister of the Established Church till he renounced the peculiar opinions he had embraced. These opinions he never renounced. They were still further ex1 Correspondence, vol. iii.

panded by his son-in-law Sandeman; and the feeble sect still known in Scotland as Glasites, is known to the south of the Tweed as Sandemanians. In modern days they can boast of having enrolled among their members the great name of Michael Faraday.

On the 8th of May 1740 the General Assembly again met, and again the principal topic of discussion was the case of the Seceders. When they were called they did not appear, and it was agreed by a large majority that the Assembly had no alternative—that it must depose them from the office of the ministry. Accordingly, on the afternoon of the 15th, they were solemnly deposed. The sentence was purposely delayed till the afternoon of the term-day, that the deposed Seceders might have a right to the stipend of the preceding half-year, for thus did the Assembly mingle mercy with judgment. But in the whole of the process, the Church exhibited a forbearance, and a desire to conciliate, which has seldom been paralleled. For eight years had the Seceders been allowed to retain their churches and draw their stipends, though all that time they had been glorying in their separation from the Establishment, and pouring calumnies upon it. They were now dislodged from their churches and deprived of their stipends, and cast upon the stream to sink or swim as they best could. It must be said they have gallantly kept their heads above the water. The truth is, the Secession Church had a popular element in its constitution which has proved to be its breath of life. When the offset was separated from the parent stock, and no longer received its nourishment, it soon struck its roots into the soil; and now, after more than a century, it flourishes as a mighty tree, under the broad shadows of which hundreds of thousands find a shelter.

CHAPTER XXV.

GEORGE WHITEFIELD was now at the zenith of his renown. He preached as no man within the memory of men had preached. In truth, if we estimate oratory by its effects, this son of a tapster from the Bell Inn of Gloucester had surpassed all ancient and all modern fame. Demosthenes had not so swayed the Athenian mob, nor Bossuet the Parisian court, nor Bolingbroke the English parliament, as Whitefield swayed the

motley multitudes who everywhere gathered around him. Men of all ranks acknowledged his wondrous power-colliers and cobblers, ploughmen and nobles, philosophers and fools. He had preached in every county of England; he had crossed the Atlantic and lifted up his voice in America; and everywhere the effect was the same. People, careless before, but now awakened to a sense of their guilt and danger, beat upon their breasts, burst into tears, swooned away; or, passing at once from sin to salvation, they could not refrain from singing for joy.1

The great Methodist preacher was now invited by the Seceders to visit Scotland. For some time the Erskines had been corresponding with him, and mentioning him publicly in their prayers, in a way which he himself thought extravagant.2 They knew that the custody of such a lion would greatly add to their popularity. The Seceders, however, did not conceal from the Methodist that they expected he would renounce his prelatic ordination, embrace Presbyterianism and the Covenants, and confine his preaching entirely to their meeting-houses. Whitefield was too large-hearted a man to be bound by such ties, and declared that he intended to visit Scotland simply as an itinerant preacher, to proclaim the gospel, and not to connect himself with any form of Church government whatever.3

On the 31st of July, Whitefield was at Dunfermline, in the house of Ralph Erskine. Ralph Erskine was perhaps the best and most liberal-minded of all the Seceders. As a preacher he did not equal his brother Ebenezer, whose declamation was bold and powerful; but he had more learning and more sense. He was fond of fun, and his love for music

1 For a time the preaching of Whitefield was not accompanied by the same violent convulsive effects as had always accompanied the preaching of Wesley; but subsequently it was.

2 Letter of Whitefield to Mr J. C., Edinburgh, August 1, 1741.

3 In June 1741, Ebenezer Erskine writes to Whitefield, "If you could find freedom to company with us, to preach with us and for us, and to accept of our advice in your work while in this country, it might contribute much to weaken the enemies' hands, and to strengthen ours in the work of the Lord, when the strength of the battle is against us. Whitefield replied, "I cannot but think the Associate Presbytery is a little too hard upon me. If I am neuter as to the particular reformation of Church government till I have more light, it will be enough. I come simply to preach the gospel, and to be received as an occasional itinerant preache by all, and not to enter into any particular connection whatever." Life of Ralph Erskine, pp. 324, 325),

(Fraser

found vent in fiddling, to the great scandal of his elders. He wrote some rhymes called "Gospel Sonnets," in which piety and drollery are strangely commingled. He also wrote a polemical treatise, entitled "Faith no Fancy," in which he shows some talent for metaphysical disquisition. Such was the man with whom Whitefield had taken up his abode.

The host instantly began to endeavour to make a proselyte of his illustrious guest. Whitefield went so far as to say that he was ordained in his time of ignorance, and that, if it were to be done again, it would not be by a bishop.1 But when Erskine wished to bargain with him that he should confine his preaching to the Seceders, Whitefield boldly said that he could refuse no call to preach Christ, whoever gave it. "Were it a Jesuit or a Mahometan," he said, "I would embrace it, for testifying against them." Whitefield preached that night in the meeting-house at Dunfermline; but he immediately afterwards set off to Edinburgh, where he preached in the Canongate Church. While in the Metropolis he also preached on the grounds of the Orphan Hospital. When he had finished his discourse on this occasion, a Quaker saluted him. "Friend George," said he, "I am as thou art. for bringing all to the life and power of the ever-living God; and therefore, if thou wilt not quarrel with me about my hat, I will not quarrel with thee about thy gown.' "2 It was a quaint lesson to the Associate Presbytery.

I am

On the Wednesday following, Whitefield returned to Dunfermline to have a conference with the Seceders met in solemn conclave. He testifies that they were a set of grave, venerable men. When they were proceeding to choose a moderator, and constitute themselves into a presbytery, Whitefield asked what all this meant. He was told it was to set him right about Church government and the Solemn League and Covenant. Whitefield replied that they might save themselves the trouble, that he had no scruples upon the point, and that to preach about such matters was not his plan. Ralph Erskine, in a conciliatory tone, asked his brethren to bear a little with their Methodist friend, as he had been born and bred in England, and could not be supposed to be so perfectly acquainted with their Covenants as if he had been a Scotchman; but one of the stern Seceders

1 Letter, Ralph Erskine to Ebenezer Erskine, 31st July. Fraser's Life of Ralph Erskine, p. 326.

2 Letter, Whitefield to Mr J. C., Edinburgh, August 1, 1741.