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of patronage. Recent circumstances had confirmed this tendency. The cases of Culross and Lanark had opened the eyes of churchmen to the awkward fact, that if a minister were inducted into a parish without a valid presentation, he could not claim the stipend, and must starve.1 A series of such cases, it was seen, would effectually disestablish the Church.

But still further, when but a year ago the Church asked the parliament to do something to relieve its poverty, a paper was put in circulation among the members of the legislature, telling how the Act of Queen Anne touching patronage was disregarded, and how many of the Scotch ministers held their livings in defiance of the law; and this was known to have prejudiced many of the English Commoners against the Augmentation Scheme.2 This reproach must be wiped away; the law must be obeyed; the rights of patrons respected; and presbyteries compelled to carry out the sentences of the superior courts. In the case of Torphichen, the screw was first applied. The presbytery was censured; but the punishment was found not to be sufficiently severe. It had not intimidated others into subjection. A heavier punishment must be inflicted, if the authority of the Assembly was to be maintained. The case of Inverkeithing occurred, and Gillespie was deposed. It is probable that the older men, accustomed from their youth to refractory presbyteries and riding commissions, would have shrunk from such a decisive step. But young men had sprung up with strong wills, decided opinions, and abilities sufficient to make themselves be heard and respected. It is not too much to say that William Robertson, Hugh Blair, and John Home were the master-spirits in the

1 The case of Lanark was not finally decided in the House of Lords till 1753; but the case of Culross, and the ground taken by the Crown in the case of Lanark, must have had a strong influence on the minds of churchmen.

2 In this paper it is said—“It appears that the presbyteries of Scotland pay very little or no regard to this law (10 Anne, cap. 12); and that, in direct disobedience to it, they frequently refuse to enter the patron's presentee; and, for the most part, moderate the call of another person named to them by the Christian people, as they are called-the heritors or the elders. It is therefore submitted that a great part of the persons who now apply to parliament for relief with respect to their stipends became entitled to them by a breach and in opposition to a law made by the parliament of Great Britain, that in case the wisdom of parliament shall incline to indulge the clergy with any alleviation of the law as to these matters, they will, at the same time, make effectual provisions for enforcing a due obedience to the Act of the 10th of Queen Anne."

movement. Dr Cumming, whose days were now numbered, as leader of the Moderates, in closing the Assembly, thought himself bound to make some apology for the youth of the men who had influenced its measures-it was young men, said he, in defence of our old constitution.1

Though it is perfectly certain that the Presbyterian government implies subordination of the presbytery to the General Assembly, and of every individual member to the whole Church, it is impossible to resist the feeling that Gillespie was hardly dealt with. His only crime was absence from a presbytery, met for a purpose of which he disapproved; and the induction of Richardson might have been effected without him, had the Assembly not arbitrarily raised the quorum from three to five. It was known that there were three men in the presbytery willing to brave the popular indignation by induct ing the presentee; it was all that the law required, and why should the Assembly require more? There was no need of wounding consciences unnecessarily. It looks as if the Moderate party had been resolved, not merely to effect this settlement, but to crush the party opposed to them. They accomplished their end; they achieved a decisive victory; but it was at the expense of a second schism in the Church. Gillespie, as we shall afterwards see, became the father and founder of the Presbytery of Relief.

Some of the Seceders remained in the Church for years after they were deposed. Gillespie at once abandoned his church, his manse, his stipend. During the summer and autumn following his deposition he preached in the fields. In his very first sermon, instead of heaping calumnies upon the Church, as the Seceders had, and as might have been expected in his circumstances, he told his hearers that, though he had been deposed for not doing what he believed it would have been sinful in him to have done, yet he hoped no public disputes should ever be the burden of his preaching, as he knew that the wrath of man worked not the righteousness of God. When winter approached he retired to a meeting-house provided for him in Dunfermline.2

In the month of June a sufficient number of the Presbytery of Dunfermline were got together to induct Richardson; but three, who were still resolute in their disobedience, were sus

1 Morren's Annals, vol. i.

2 Morren's Annals, vol. i. pp. 275, 276. Life of Gillespie in United Presbyterian Fathers.

pended from their judicial functions, and continued under this sentence for thirteen years.

The summary deposition of Gillespie led to much discussion throughout the Church. Some declared that presby teries were now subjected to a tyranny too heavy to be borne; others said that the law had simply been vindicated, and the transgression of it punished. These opposite feelings entered into sermons; they even mingled with prayers. Synods and presbyteries took up the matter, and arrived at various conclusions. The Synod of Glasgow and Ayr ranged itself on the liberal side; the Synod of Lothian and Tweeddale declared itself for law and order, come what might.1 It was hoped by many that the Assembly of 1753 would restore Gillespie. It was thought that enough had been done to magnify the authority of the supreme court, and that mercy might now follow in the footsteps of judgment. The people of Carnock petitioned for his restoration. The Presbytery of Dunfermline petitioned for it. By the narrow majority of three the Assembly refused their prayer. It is evident that Gillespie had himself been looking forward to restoration; but disappointed in his hopes, he now reluctantly formed a kirksession, and began to administer the sacraments to those who adhered to him. Baffled and beat in the courts of the Church, the Popular party sought their revenge in the Press. Early in 1753, Witherspoon published his "Ecclesiastical Characteristics, or the Arcana of Church Policy," in which he described, with a keen and delicate irony, almost worthy of Pascal, the progress of Moderatism.

David Hume had now been long known to the metaphysical and literary world. So far back as 1738 he had published his celebrated "Treatise of Human Nature," in which, following out the speculations of Locke and Berkeley to their legitimate conclusion, he had shown that man has no knowledge, and can have no knowledge of anything beyond his own ideas and impressions. He was only twenty-five years of age at the time; but his speculations were so bold and original as at once to place him in the foremost rank of philosophers. Both Kant and Reid acknowledged that they were first roused from their dogmatism by his scepticism. He afterwards, at different dates, published his "Essays, Moral and Political," and his "Inquiry Concerning the 1 Morren's Annals, vol. ii. pp. 1-8. 2 Morren's Annals, vol. i. pp. 277, 278.

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Human Understanding," in which some of the crudities of his juvenile composition are corrected, and his system of scepticism is more fully developed. Some of his Essays are among the most perfect in our language, whether we consider the simple beauty of their diction, or the fine philosophic

truths they contain.

tions he has entered, not with unsandaled foot, the sacred domain of morals and religion, and left untouched very little which we can either piously believe or virtuously do. In his "Natural History of Religion," he more than insinuates doubts as to the solidity of the foundations upon which natural theology is built; and in his "Essay on Miracles," borrowing his weapons from the armoury of the Church, appropriating to his use the argument of Tillotson upon transubstantiation, he attempts to demonstrate the startling proposi

But, unhappily, in some of his specula

tion, that " no

testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle,

unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours

to establish."

of

Yet, with all his philosophical scepticism, Hume was a man exemplary morals, of genuine benevolence, and of an almost childlike simplicity and guilelessness of disposition. He never intruded his peculiar opinions upon general society,

so that even

clergymen could mingle in the same society with

He is pronounced by his

"He had, it

him, and often did so, without hearing a word to wound their feelings or dishonour their faith. illustrious biographer, Adam Smith, to be the most perfectly wise and virtuous man he had ever known. might be said, in the language which the Grecian historian applies to an illustrious Roman, two minds: one which ininvent, but which it could not always disentangle; another, simple, natural, and playful, which made his conversation delightful to his friends, and even frequently conciliated men whose principles of belief his philosophical doubts, if they had not power to shake, had grieved and offended." 1

Contemporary with Mr Hume was Henry Home, Lord Kames. Possessed of great activity of mind and versatility of genius, this accomplished man relieved the drudgery of his professional toil by the study of metaphysics, and in 1751 published his "Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion." Unlike Mr Hume, Lord Kames was no

1 Henry Mackenzie's Life of John Home, p. 21.

unbeliever; he was an elder in the Church; and one of the topics insisted upon in his Essays is the existence of the innate ideas of right and wrong. He was, however, a freethinking man, and had upon some points expressed himself in such a way as to make some religionists believe that, under the profession of Christianity, he concealed a baleful infidelity. He had especially given offence by declaring that the existence of an all-pervading Deity was inconsistent with liberty of action in man; and that the liberty which every man fancies himself to possess was a delusion kindly implanted in his bosom by nature, as necessary to the exist ence of virtue.

There lived at this time a Mr George Anderson, who held the post of Chaplain in Watson's Hospital at Edinburgh. He had no great acuteness, but he possessed vigour of mind, and was of an irascible and pugnacious disposition. At the age of eighty, when most polemics are putting off their armour, he was putting his on, to run a tilt with Henry Home of Kames. In a pamphlet, entitled an "Estimate of the Profit and Loss of Religion, personally and publicly stated," he impugned the Essays as opposed to both religion and morals. This called public attention to the subject. The first stroke was struck. In May 1755 an anonymous pamphlet appeared, addressed to the members of the General Assembly, then sitting. It professed to be an analysis of the writings of Henry Home and David Hume; it gave a list of propositions alleged to be taught by them, and proved this by passages extracted from their works.1 The Assembly, thus called to consider the matter, passed an act, expressing deep concern at the prevalence of infidelity and immorality, and enjoining ministers carefully to guard their flocks against their contagion.2 In all this the Church did wisely and well.

But the matter was not at an end. A few days after the Assembly rose, there appeared a pamphlet, entitled “Observations on the Analysis of the Moral and Religious Sentiments," &c., which was generally attributed to Dr Hugh Blair, then at the height of his popularity as a preacher. Just a year before this he had been brought to fill the pulpit of Lady Yester's, and was fascinating fashionable audiences by sermons which still remain to us, and are certainly elegant in their didactic structure; but which have neither the fancy

1 Morren's Annals, vol. ii. pp. 54-58. 2 Acts of Assembly, p. 721.

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