CHAPTER I.

FROM THE INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY INTO SCOTLAND, TO THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE REFORMATION.

Introductory Remarks-Statement of General Principles involved in all Church History-Divine Truth infused into the Social System-Opposition from Man's Fallen Nature-Characteristic Principles of different Churches-Of the Church of ScotlandIntroduction of Christianity into Scotland-The Culdees-Peculiarities of their System-Introduced into England-Augustine the Monk-He and his followers oppose the Culdees-They retire to Scotland-The Prelatic System of Rome introduced-the Culdees at length overborne and suppressed-The leading Tenets of the Culdees-Progress of Popery-Its Wealth and Power-State of Scotland at the Commencement of the Reformation.

THERE are certain general principles involved in all Church History, greatly more profound in their character and important in their consequences than those which appear in, or can be deduced from, the records of Civil History. The civil historian has to deal with man merely as the mortal inhabitant of this world; and, however deeply his philosophical knowledge of the human mind may enable him to penetrate into those undeclared motives by which sovereigns and statesmen are often influenced, and the affairs of nations controlled, there is still one department, and that the mightiest of all, into which it is not his province to enter. He may unravel the twisted intrigues of mere worldly policy; he may detect and confute the sophistries of worldly wisdom; but, except he be something more than a philosophical historian, he will remain utterly unable to understand the meaning and the power of conscience, influenced by religion, and impelling men frequently to act directly contrary to every thing which he would deem politic and expedient. Not only this class of motives, but the course of events also, will often be found to lie equally beyond his reach adequately to comprehend and explain. He will often find means and arrangements apparently the wisest and most sufficient, utterly fail of accomplishing the proposed end; while others, which seem ill advised and feeble, will be crowned with the most remarkable success. Frequently, therefore, must he content himself with recording the course of events, of which the impelling causes and controlling agencies are to him altogether unknown. Man as he is, in short, impelled by the passions and allured by the interests of his known and common nature,-circumscribed, as he at present appears, within the limits of space and time, of his earthly pursuits and mortal life, forms the object

of the civil historian's important yet incomplete re

searches.

But Church History has to deal with the deeds and characters of men in that very department into which the civil historian cannot enter. It views man as a moral and spiritual being, fallen from his original condition of purity and happiness, the slave of guilty passions, degraded by low and grovelling pursuits, and blinded by inveterate prejudices, yet capable of recovery from his depraved and miserable condition, and at present under a dispensation divinely fitted to restore him to more than the purity and elevation from which he fell. He is seen, therefore, as constantly impelled by the one or the other of two contending influences, directly hostile to each other; the one, the influence of his fallen and corrupt nature, striving to perpetuate all its own evil tendencies, and to impede and pervert all the efforts of its opponent; the other, the influence of revealed religion, of Christianity, striving to expel corruption, remove prejudices, and heal the moral maladies of the soul, by the infusion of the new and sacred principles of eternal truth. Church History has, therefore, for its peculiar province, the infusion into the soul of fallen man of the sacred principles of divine revealed truth, their influence in the social system, as they strive to pervade and mould it anew, the opposition which they meet with from the inherent depravity of the heart, the struggles of these contending influences of good and evil, of the world and religion,-the convulsions occasionally thereby produced, and the changes which take place in the aspect and structure of society, as the one or the other from time to time obtains ascendency, puts forth its power, and exhibits its native character. It is thus evident that the history of the Church of any land is the history of the moral and spiritual life of that land; and that it claims, as its own peculiar domain, that very region of moral and spiritual principles and motives into which the secular historian, as such, cannot even enter, and yet without some knowledge of which, much of what is most important in the history of every nation can never be understood and explained.

In tracing the Church History of any country, we must expect to meet with much that we must both deplore and condemn. For although the principles which Christianity introduces into the soul of man, and thereby into the social system, are in themselves absolutely perfect, yet they are rarely perfectly received, and never have been perfectly developed. Divine truth

does not, indeed, contract any portion of human error by entering into the mind of man; but the depraved and prejudiced human mind obtains in general only a partial reception and distorted view of its great principles. The inevitable consequence is, that its genuine effects are very greatly impaired by the disturbing influence of human depravity and prejudice. Some of the most important religious principles are frequently obscured, because they have been either imperfectly understood, or are so opposed to the natural predilections of fallen man as to be disliked, and therefore perverted. They do indeed reappear from time to time, as peculiar junctures, under the guiding of Divine Providence, call them forth; until their true character and value being thus forced upon the perception of the general mind, they are at length received, and opportunity thereby given for the similar process of developement to others, which had been equally neglected or opposed. This is the case, whether such principles have direct reference to the government, the doctrine, or the discipline of the Christian Church, as might easily be shown from the general records of Church History.

There is also a necessary continuity of character, as of being, in the life and history of any Church; and that character can never be rightly understood, however familiar we may be with the details of its general history, unless we have a clear and true conception of those leading principles which have always formed the master element of its essential existence. By keeping them steadily in view, we shall be able to trace distinctly all the various changes and alternations of its course, marking and understanding not merely those external events which are manifest to the world, but those unseen influences which move, and mould, and animate the whole. Even in periods of comparative stagnation, when there seems to be a cessation of all active and vital impulses, the knowledge of what forms the essential characteristics of a national Church may enable us to detect the other wise imperceptible progress of a deep and calm under-current, preparing for some new and mighty developement of silently-ripened energies, by which the whole structure of society may be convulsed, and constrained to assume a new aspect, more in conformity with the character of its inward moral and religious life.

Every person who has paid much attention to Church History must be aware that, of the great leading principles of Christianity, some have been held in peculiar reverence, and defended with peculiar determination, by one national Church, and some by another; and from this has arisen in each that distinctive characteristic by which the various portions of the Church general maintain their individuality, notwithstanding their common resemblance. It would require too wide a survey, and perhaps involve a discussion too vague, to point out the distinctive characteristics of the chief national Churches throughout the Christian world; but there can be little difficulty in making specific mention of that great Christian principle which the Church of Scotland has always striven to realize and defend,namely, THAT THE LORD JESUS CHRIST IS THE ONLY HEAD AND KING OF THE CHURCH; whence it follows, by necessary consequence, THAT ITS GOVERNMENT IS DERIVED FROM HIM ALONE, AND IS DISTINCT FROM,

AND NOT SUBORDINATE IN ITS OWN PROVINCE TO, THE

CIVIL MAGISTRATE. The very remoteness of Scotland from Rome, the seat first of imperial, and subsequently of ecclesiastical power, tended to allow for a time a more free developement of that great principle, and of its legitimate consequences, than would have been pos

sible had it been more accessible to the influence of Roman supremacy. It might, perhaps, be thought by some, that the Presbyterian form of church government, rather than the great principle of the sole Sovereignty of Christ, has been, and is, the characteristic tenet of the Church of Scotland. But it requires only a little deeper investigation, or profounder thought, to enable any impartial and unprejudiced person to see, that the great principle of Christ's sole Sovereignty must prohibit the Church which holds it from the adoption of any merely human inventions or arrangements in that form of government which He has given to the Church, his free spiritual kingdom, of which the Holy Scriptures contain the only authoritative enactment and declaration. It is not our purpose to enter here into the controversy respecting forms of church government, farther than merely to state our full conviction, that it can be proved, and often has been proved, that the Episcopalian, or rather let us term it now, and throughout this work, the Prelatic form of church government, is one of merely human invention; whilst the Presbyterian is of divine origin and authority, and consequently is that which would of necessity be adopted and retained by any Church which held as its leading principle the sole headship and kingly dominion of the Lord Jesus Christ. But it is enough at present merely to have stated these general principles, and suggested their application. If the candid reader will bear them in mind during his perusal of the following pages, he will soon be able to decide for himself respecting their truth and their importance.

The first introduction of Christianity into Scotland cannot, it appears, be now exactly ascertained. It would be in vain to refer to the legendary records of ancient Scottish kings, given by some of our historians, as furnishing authoritative information respecting the events of a period so far beyond the boundaries of our nation's authentic annals. Perhaps the earliest indication that the light of Christianity had begun to dawn upon the remote regions of Caledonia, that can at all be depended upon, may be found in the words of Tertullian, who asserts, that "those parts of Britain which were inaccessible to the Romans had become subject to Christ." And although we are not to attach to the fervid language of a rhetorician the same degree of credit which we yield to the direct statements of a historian, yet, remembering the extreme rapidity with which Christianity was propagated throughout the Roman empire in the apostolic age, it is by no means improbable that it should have reached Britain, and even penetrated to the mountains of Caledonia, before the close of the second century. The violence of the persecutions which raged in every part of Rome's dominion's during the third century, may readily be supposed to have driven many of the Christians beyond the boundaries of the empire, and thus to have aided indirectly in the diffusion of the gospel, and especially to have promoted its introduction into the territories of unsubdued nations. Many of those persecuted Christians may then have found a refuge among the unconquered districts of Scotland and Ireland, where they would, of course, endeavour to instruct the rude but not inhospitable natives in the knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus.

In what manner these early Christian refugees commenced what may be termed their missionary labours among the Scots and Picts,-and whether, as some authors assert, the greater number of them resorted to Ireland, and there assembling themselves together, re