cording to the aforesaid qualifications; and their first meeting to be at Edinburgh on the 23d instant [July], with power afterwards to adjourn and meet as they shall see convenient, aye, and while their majesties recal and discharge this commission 1. PARLIAMENT next passed an "Act for settling the quiet and peace of the church;" wherein "our sovereign lord and lady, &c. ratify, approve, and perpetually confirm, the fifth act of the second session of this current parliament, intituled, an act ratifying the Confession of Faith, and settling presbyterian government in the whole heads, articles, and clauses thereof. . . . That no person be admitted or continued for hereafter to be a minister or preacher within this church, unless that he subscribe the Confession of Faith ratified in the foresaid fifth act of the second session of this parliament, declaring the same to be the confession of his own faith, and that he owns the doctrine therein contained to be the true doctrine, which he will constantly adhere to; and likewise that he owns and acknowledges presbyterian church government, as settled by the foresaid fifth act of the second session of this parliament, to be the only government of this church, and that he will submit thereto and concur therewith, and never endeavour, directly or indirectly, the prejudice or subversion thereof. And their majesties. . . statute and ordain, that uniformity of worship and of the administration of public ordinances within this church, be observed by all the said ministers and preachers as the same are at present performed and allowed therein, or shall be hereafter declared by the authority of the same; and that no minister or preacher be admitted or continued for hereafter unless that he subscribe to observe, and do actually observe, the foresaid uniformity 2." This uniformity was to consist in a negation of the then practice of the church-that is, that none of the forms be retained in the public worship of God that are not used by the presbyterians; that the Lord's Prayer, the Doxology, and the Apostles' Creed, be rejected from the public worship, and that the Holy Scriptures be no more used in the public assemblies as heretofore. THERE WAS another act Rescissory passed about the same time, which repealed all former acts against non-conformity that had been passed since the year 1661, or that enforced conformity with the established episcopal church and its go 125th Act, 4th July.-Acts of Parliament, ix. p. 163, 164. vernment under archbishops and bishops. This act "rescinded, cassed, and annulled all acts for denouncing excommunicate persons, and anent sentences of excommunication, with all other sentences of the same import, and bot [without] prejudice of this generality, all acts enjoining civil pains upon sentences of excommunication whatever." In the church of England there are excommunications minor, major, and ipso facto. The former are passed on those who knowingly converse with an excommunicated person when there is no necessity for their so doing; and by this censure men are merely deprived of the sacraments. The major excommunication deprives men not only of the sacraments, but of all communication with other christian men without as well as within the church; but they are not deprived of communication with christian people except in the church, till they have remained three months under this sentence without seeking the benefit of absolution. An ipso-facto excommunication means by a man's own act; such as the wilful falling into schism or popery, which last was as bad as the ancient Thurificati, who were lapsed christians that burnt incense upon the altars of the heathen gods, and were reckoned the worst and vilest sort of idolaters. In the case of schism or idolatry, although excommunication is not denounced, nevertheless it really takes place, and a clergyman may refuse to bury men if they die in this condition, and no one can testify to their repentance1. In Scotland, the old popish temporal pains and penalties attached to excommunication were in force up to the period at which we are arrived. The parliament wisely and humanely took away the power of inflicting the dreadful pains upon excommunicated persons, that the law till then allowed; for the barbarous cruelty of the presbyterians, in using this engine of tyranny, during their former usurpation, had not been forgotten. This act, says Mr. Skinner, "took out the sting of excommunication which had been so terrible, and had produced such grievous effects under every prevailing system of church discipline. Indeed, it was much to be regretted that any scheme of reformation, real or pretended, should have retained one of the most scandalous corruptions of popery introduced in one of the darkest ages, and first put in practice by one of the most overbearing popes, Gregory VII., to the manifest hurt of civil society, and to the total disregard of the original design of that spiritual power committed to the church, not for destruction but for edification; by mortifying the soul, not 1 Johnson's Clergymen's Vade-Mecum, 180-185. by punishing the body or seizing the goods of the offender. This abuse was now luckily removed, and the episcopal clergy both then and since, amidst all the hardships of subjection which this parliament laid them under to the new establish ment, are in so far obliged to it for thus curtailing the dangerous extent of ecclesiastical jurisdiction by this salutary act, and thereby putting it out of the kirk's power to distress those of a different persuasion so much as by their avowed principles, and with their former privileges, they would in all probability have done 1." PARLIAMENT vested in the crown all the superiorities which had formerly belonged to the church, and made an act for the plantation of kirks and valuation of tiends or tithes, founded upon the laws made by Charles I. Their majesties are made to say they were resolved to prosecute this good work for the universal good of their subjects, and especially for the encouragement of the ministers of the gospel. Having now a second time "cast down the walls of Jericho2,” and raised a new fabric with the untempered mortar of the “inclinations of the people" and the sacrilege of the "rabble," the parliament was prorogued on the 22d of July, and the executive power was devolved, as in times past, upon the privy council. BUT complete and sweeping as this revolution was, it failed to give satisfaction to the presbyterians, who only took what they got as an instalment till time and opportunity enabled them to follow out the obligations of the covenant. The antiburghers, who are consistent presbyterians, as late as the year 1829 have borne their "testimony against the public evils" which were then perpetrated, and which they say introduced many corruptions into the kirk. They say," the settlement both of church and state was accompanied with sinful defects, and followed by acts and proceedings which deeply affect the interests of religion to this day. The conduct of the nation and its representatives, at the Revolution, was faulty in dif ferent respects. The estates of the nation.... did neither then nor afterwards faithfully and plainly inform their rulers of their duty, or of the peculiar obligations under which Scotland lay, in consequence of her national attainments and vows. The parliament abolished prelacy as a great and insupportable grievance to this nation, and contrary to the inclinations of the generality of the people ever since the reformation; but they did not, as had been done in former times by the competent 1 Ecclesiastical Hist. ii. 554. * Vide ante, i. ch. xiv. 634. . authorities, consider it as contrary to the word of God, and abjured by our covenants. They ratified the presbyterian government according to its establishment in 1592, in the way of sinfully overlooking and passing by all the legal securities given to it between 1638 and 1650, which, together with the reformation attained to in that period, was left buried under the infamous rescissory act, which stands in the body of our Scotch law to this day. In like manner they ratified the Westminster Confession of Faith, as the public and avowed confession of this church, without any reference to the act of the General Assembly, 1647, by which it was received as a part of the uniformity in the churches of the three kingdoms, and with an explicit assertion of the inherent right of the church to call her own assemblies-an omission which paved the way for dangerous encroachments by the state. Though certain laws which subjected persons to penalties for owning the National Covenant and Solemn League were repealed, yet these covenants were allowed to remain under the indignities done them by the rescissory and other acts; nor were they excepted from those oaths which were removed to make way for a general and unqualified oath of allegiance to the sovereign. The draught of an act for excluding from places of power and trust such as had been accessory to the oppressions of the late persecuting period, was laid aside; in consequence of which, persons were entrusted with the management of the affairs of the nation who were hostile to its best interests, and who, though they yielded to the establishment of the presbyterian church, took pleasure in clogging her operations, and were ready to embrace the first opportunity to infringe her rights and invalidate the security which she had obtained1." 1 Testimony of the Associated Synod of Original Seceders, 37. 496 CHAPTER LIV. PRIMACY OF ARCHBISHOP ROSS. Effects of the Assertory Act.-The church the candlestick-the gospel the light. -Westminster Confession-schisms.-Defects in the church-defects in extemporary worship.-Advantages of a liturgy.-Fundamental charter of presbytery-objections to it.-Arts practised at the Revolution.—Objections to prelacy being a grievance.-Whether prelacy was popular?—The number of the presbyterians-numbers of episcopalians.—First reformers not justified.— the principle of reformation.-Wherein the presbyterians differ from Knox-in faith—in the use of a liturgy-in discipline.—Episcopal authority and succession-whence derived.-Despised- and why.-Patronage. 1690.-BY WHATEVER motives the duke of Lauderdale may have been actuated in passing the ASSERTORY ACT, we have seen its calamitous effects in several instances, in the degradation of christian bishops, the imposition of a self-contradictory and impious Test that caused a persecution of the clergy, and now the total overthrow of the church of Christ. It gave the new sovereign the power to "order and dispose of the external government and policy of the church" at his pleasure. Although William himself had no desire to make any change, yet those into whose hands the desertion of James's ministers from their posts had thrown the executive government, were not slack to take advantage of the power that this act conferred on the crown. The presbyterian conventionparliament shewed wisdom in repealing it; for so long as it stood in force, William might have again changed their new policy, and have restored the hierarchy to its former establishment. Although the presbyterians were justly opposed to it from first to last, yet they took advantage of its provisions before they removed it from the statute-book; a species of serpentine wisdom which they imbibed from their friends the jesuits. The events of the last year in Scotland were the triumphs of jesuitism. The grand object of the papacy, and its most devoted agents, the jesuits, is to overturn the re |