says, "all the city quite thunderstruck at the fulminating bull which had been issued." He instantly set himself to repay the compliment which had been done him; and in every sermon, as we are told, "he fired red-hot shots against the General Assembly and the General Associate Synod." He was well fitted for this kind of work. A strange medley he certainly was-half comedian, half divine; quite as much at home in making people laugh as in making them cry. For anecdote, sarcasm, pungent saying, his quiver was full of these, and he did not spare them. "Three reasons alone," said he, “can be assigned for the Church's conduct: these are madness, malice, or an attempt to discover our treasonable plots; and the first of these should seem the most probable, the pastoral admonition being dated on the day of the full moon."1 His second tour was in fact a crusade against all the Churches of Scotland. Bitter things were said, and of course bitter resentments were roused; but, with all his oddities, Rowland Hill was a large-hearted man; and there can be no doubt he uttered truths which, when the irritation of the time subsided, helped to break down the barriers which separated Church from Church, and Christian from Christian. His own conduct in fraternizing with the Haldanes—an English Episcopalian with Scotch Independents-is a proof of his catholicity.

Such were the events occurring in Scotland when the eighteenth century drew to a close; and to the rude shock which these communicated, both to the Established and Dissenting Churches, we may trace part of the activity and zeal which agitated Scotland in the succeeding age.

CHAPTER XXVII.

PRESBYTERY had now existed for more than a hundred years without interruption, and it had stood the test of time. It had shown itself possessed of enough of the plastic nature to accommodate itself to circumstances. Under the weak

government of the Sixth James, it had been turbulent and domineering; under the strong government of the House of Hanover, it was courtly and complying. The frenzied fanaticism with which it had carried out the principles of the Covenant, the fierceness with which it had turned upon its 1 1 Jones's Memoirs of Rowland Hill. Lives of the Haldanes.

persecutors when it was called to resist unto blood, made many say that it was a thing which no man could tame; but it was seen that, after all, Presbyterians were but men, amenable to all the influences which usually operate upon men. Placed under a government which it was vain to resist, they submitted; kindly treated by the government, they became loyal. Knowing that vulgar abuse, though spoken from the pulpit, would no longer raise them to the rank of saints and confessors, they abandoned the practice, and discoursed in as dulcet tones as the best-bred London rector. The most fastidious critic could find little fault with the flowing and finished periods of Robertson and Blair.

It was a maxim of James VI., and his son and his grandson after him, that Presbytery was inconsistent with monarchy. No bishop, no king. Their experience afforded some foundation for their faith; but the whole history of the eighteenth century proved, that a republican Church might be the firmest ally of a monarchical State. In troublous times, the Church of Scotland stood fast by the throne, and greatly helped to break the back of two formidable rebellions. The strongest conservative principles not unfrequently enter into the political creed of Presbyterian ministers.

The polished though unprincipled Charles gets credit for saying, that Presbytery was not a religion for a gentleman. It certainly never has been a religion for such a gentleman as he was. It never has gilded courtly vices; it never has preached profligacy and fraud. But if the saying simply insinuated the want of refinement, the eighteenth century removed the reproach. The Revolution Church was not long established till its ministers began to aim at a different style of preaching from what had been used on the hillside; a high degree of excellence was gradually attained; and the pulpit eloquence of Scotland at this period will favourably compare with that of the south. The finest gentleman in the empire, a king himself, might have listened with pleasure to the dignified eloquence of Dr Dick, or the fervid declamation which made Webster the idol of the people. Some ministers were taunted by their brethren with aiming at more than literary merit. They were accused of aping the manner, the tones, the postures of the Anglican clergy. Their stubborn Presbyterianism was breaking down under southern influences.1

1 See Witherspoon's Characteristics. In the Scots Magazine, too, there are several articles in which this is insinuated.

The two parties who divided the Church Courts are said to have been recognisable in general society. The Popular men were somewhat austere in their manners, and never put off the clergyman. The Moderates aimed at that suavity of deportment which lends to society its principal charm. They had no rules to hinder them from doing as other Christians did. They would take a hand at cards, they would dance, they would sing an accompaniment. Their urbanity and accomplishments made them favourites at the dinner-table and the supper-party. But though sometimes censured by the stricter sort for their laxity, they were, with a few exceptions, men of exemplary lives.1

Either party is also said to have had its own style of preaching. The Popular men were rigidly Calvinistic, giving prominence to the doctrines of election and irresistible grace; the Moderates, if not Arminians, at least kept out of view the peculiar principles of Calvinism. The former dwelt much upon the doctrines of Christianity, and especially upon justification by faith; the latter insisted mainly upon the keeping of the commandments. They had a peculiar fondness for sermons upon sympathy, good-will, benevolence, honesty, and all the other cardinal virtues. But all the same, one of the great wants of the age was philanthropic earnestness. Even the Popular clergy were far from being earnest in good works, their style of preaching and catechising was merely stereotype, and indicated little; and many of the Moderates were literary epicures, or men of the world, or sunk in indolence and selfindulgence.

It has been frequently said, that a large proportion of the Moderate clergy were Rationalists. There is very little foundation for the assertion when thus broadly made. No doubt a sceptical tendency was common among the educated classes. The wit of Voltaire and philosophy of Hume had produced this result. Some of the clergy were infected with the prevailing spirit, and began to doubt the peculiar doctrines of Christianity. The writings of Taylor of Norwich found their way to the north, and helped still further to unsettle their faith in regard to the divinity and atonement of Christ. Of such there were a few, but they were never very numerous, and in general managed to conceal their opinions. It is singular they were to be found chiefly in the west-the old seat of the Covenant.2

1 Mackenzie's Life of Home, &c.

2 The assertions made in regard to this matter are very contradictory.

Before the end of the century, the contest about patronage might be regarded as over. Patrons now saw themselves in possession of an undoubted right, and generally exercised it, with full assurance that the presbytery would induct their presentee. For more than forty years the Assembly had annually instructed its Commission to remonstrate, if opportunity should occur, against patronage as a grievance; but in 1781 the instruction was let drop. Patronage was no longer regarded as a burden. The call still remained, but it remained only as a memorial of ancient freedom, like the senate and the consulship during the empire of Rome. A presentee might be ordained, though there was not a single name appended to his call. The Moderates said that patronage had elevated the character of the clergy; their opponents affirmed that it had introduced hirelings into the Church, who were careless about their flocks, but were ever dancing attendance on the gentry.

Dissent was steadily on the increase. Though the people seldom opposed a presentee whom they disliked, they too frequently, when such a man was forced upon them, abandoned the parish church for the meeting-house. The Seceders were ever on the alert, ready to take advantage of any discontent that had sprung up in the parish. In 1773 the Burgher Associate Synod had fifty-nine congregations, served by forty-three ministers; the Antiburgher Associate Synod had ninety-seven congregations, and seventy-seven ministers; the Relief Synod had nineteen congregations, and fourteen ministers; the Cameronians had nine congregations, and seven ministers; of Independent congregations there were six; so that, beside Roman Catholics and Episcopalians, there were already in Scotland one hundred and ninety Dissenting congregations, although Dissent was scarcely forty years old.1

The Seceders from the very first had exhibited an unhappy propensity to division. In their spiritual optics, the Lord Cockburn, in his "Memorials," emphatically denies that there was much infidelity among the upper classes at the close of the eighteenth century. He declares that he never heard such a thing as infidelity mooted. In such books as the "Lives of the Haldanes, we are led to believe that almost all the clergy were Socinians and sceptics together. In this there is gross and mischievous exaggeration.

1 Dr Francis Hutchinson's "Considerations on Patronage," first published in 1735, was republished in 1774; and attached to it was a table showing the strength of the Dissenters in Scotland. It is from it that I have borrowed my statistics.

smallest matters of opinion were magnified into cases of conscience, for which they must necessarily excommunicate one another. We have already seen them split into Burghers and Antiburghers. Towards the end of the century, the Burghers quarrelled among themselves in regard to the continued obligation of the Covenants, and the amount of power in religious matters assigned to the civil magistrate in the Westminster Confession. In 1799 a minority withdrew and assumed to themselves the name of the Old Light Burghers. About the same period the Antiburghers began to quarrel about the civil magistrate; and in 1806 a swarm came off from the parent-hive, and called themselves the Constitutional Associate Presbytery. But notwithstanding the intestine wars which these divisions implied, the Seceders were steadily increasing. They looked like those animals which propagate themselves by the separation of their parts.

The Seceder ministers were still somewhat narrow in their notions, but more than any other religious body they had thrown themselves upon the people; and as the people became more liberal and enlightened, they became more liberal and enlightened too. Till near the end of the century, they preached the intolerant principles of the Covenants.1 In our own day they command universal respect-there is no path of literature which they do not tread; there is no catholic sentiment which they do not maintain. But it was not so from the beginning; they have been floated to it by a rising tide. The Relief Church was open-hearted from the first.

1 There is a defence of persecution by one of the Seceders, which is very curious if not ingenious. "What injustice were it if a godly magistrate should oblige his pagan or idolatrous subjects to hear the Word of God, that they may judge of it afterwards in their own consciences? If this author think that unlawful, I am sure MacLean of Coll had a much better thought of things, who obliged his Popish tenants to hear a Protestant minister, leaving it to them to judge of his doctrine. And God so far blest the gentleman's honest endeavours, that after some days almost all of them turned Protestants, being convinced of the truth by its intrinsic evidences, and owned it was their mercy they were made to hear the gospel against their own inclination. No doubt some will say this is a forcing of men's consciences; and, if it were allowed, princes in other parts of the world may oblige their subjects to go to mass or to Mahometan mosques; but I answer, a magistrate may lawfully do that for truth which no prince may do against it. It is lawful for the kings of the earth to hate the whore and burn her flesh with fire; but it never was nor will be lawful for any to treat the Church of God so" (p. 57). (A Review of a Paper lately written against the Law and Binding Obligation of our Sacred National Covenants, by a Lover of Truth and Peace, re-edited in 1779 by a member of the Secession.)