men, it is in vain, though the little remainder of our church and state should perish before our eyes." In the synod of Glasgow the protestors had the majority, and Baillie says they had "for two days fell bickerings. Brethren of our judgment [the resolutioners] were rarely convened; the other very frequently." And again, the protestors " will plant churches only with the most violent young men of their own side, and are sure, by some means or other, to mar all others to the utmost of their power; they mind nought but to compass their designs, and for that end to tread down all in their way."

1653. THE ENGLISH visitors of the universities appointed the "fire brand," Patrick Gillespie, principal of the university of Glasgow; against which Mr. Baillie and others protested, because he was not furnished with that measure of learning necessary for such an office, and because he had been deposed by the General Assembly, 1651, and he had not yet satisfied any of their judicatories. It appears that Gillespie had meditated some vengeance on Baillie, with whom he was to commence a prosecution before the visitors," as the beginning of a sore persecution to many." Gillespie intended to summon his opponents before the English judge, in order that he might decide whether the established presbytery, or a seceding one, which he himself had set up, were the legal establishment, and Baillie says, "the man is restless," indeed he seems to have kept them all in hot water; and he further adds, his procuring Baillie's dismissal, and his own appointment, "is to me a demonstration that there is more betwixt that [the protestor] party and the English than we yet know of." Cant wrote from Aberdeen to the synod of Glasgow "a large and injurious invective against all who will not join with the protestors to serve the enemy, to continue the yoke of strangers for ever on their native country, and to lay a necessity on the consciences of the people to exclude, without all cause, the king, the nobility, and all who will not be proselytes to them, from professing their civil rights."

Retributive justice was now about to fall on the divided and distracted presbyterians, and the very men who had held an Assembly, in defiance of their sovereign, and began that rebellion which hurled him from his throne, were now to be dispersed from their usurped chair of infallibility by the command of an usurper. The Assembly met in Edinburgh on the 20th of July, and, in Baillie's mournful words, when it "was set in the ordinary time and place, lieutenant-colonel Cotterell beset the church with some ratts of musketeers and a troop of horse; himself (after our fast, wherein Mr. Dickson and Mr. Douglas

had two gracious sermons) entered the Assembly-house, and immediately after Mr. Dickson the moderator his prayer, required audience; wherein he inquired, if we did sit there by the authority of the parliament of the commonwealth of England? or of the commander-in-chief of the English forces? or of the English judges in Scotland? The moderator replied, "that we were an ecclesiastical synod, a spiritual court of Jesus Christ, which meddled not with any thing civil; [!!] that our authority was from God, and established by the laws of the land yet standing unrepealed; that by the Solemn League and Covenant the most of the English army stood obliged to defend our General Assembly. When some speeches of this kind had passed, the lieutenant-colonel told us, his order was to dissolve us; whereupon he commanded all of us to follow him, else he would drag us out of the room. When we had entered a protestation of this unheard-of and unexampled violence, we did rise and follow him; he led us all through the whole streets a mile out of the town, encompassing us with foot companies of musketeers, and horsemen without; all the people gazing and mourning as at the saddest spectacle they had ever seen. When he had led us a mile without the town, he then declared what further he had in commission; that we should not dare to meet any more above three in number; and that against eight o'clock to-morrow, we should depart the town, under pain of being guilty of breaking the public peace. And the following day, by sound of trumpet, we were commanded off town, under the pain of present imprisonment. Thus our General Assembly, the glory and strength of our church upon earth, is, by your soldiery, crushed and trod under foot, without the least provocation from us, at this time, either in word or deed. For this our hearts are sad, our eyes run down with water; we sigh to God, against whom we have sinned, and wait for the help of his hand; but from those who oppressed us we deserved no evil. We hear a noise of further orders, to discharge all our synods and presbyteries, and all prayer for our king: many the most moderate reckon such orders will make havoc of our church, and raise against many of the best men we have, a sore persecution, which, God willing, we purpose to endure [with] all patience and faith, giving just offence to none1."

HERE ENDETH, therefore, the reign of the General Assemblies; for Cromwell never suffered them to meet again during his protectorate, and, in fact, it may be said to have been the deathblow to the presbyterian establishment, for it deprived the whole

Raillie's Letters, iii. 225-226.

kirk of its government. But it is a just retribution. They sat in defiance of the king's authority, and enacted laws subversive of the civil and ecclesiastical laws of the kingdom, in 1638, and annulled the acts of six General Assemblies, whose acts had been ratified by as many parliaments; they deposed, excommunicated, and imprecated a curse on the governors of the church, and even threatened their lives; they prosecuted Laud, Strafford, and the king, to death; and they excommunicated all the loyal men who had ventured their lives and fortunes for the rescue of their murdered sovereign, and who supported the pretensions of their young king; and they were then divided among themselves in a violent and most exasperating schism, which has never been healed to this hour. Cromwell's summary dissolution of their Assemblies, therefore, was only in a mitigated form commending the poisoned chalice to their own lips; a retaliation for their having, as Mr. Henderson said, "thrown down the walls of Jericho" in 1638. This dispersion, says Mr. Skinner, was a "severe blow to the presbyterian kirk of Scotland, thus to have their General Assembly, which had maintained its ground so long, and acted in defiance of even sovereign authority, scattered like chaff by the wind of command from a petty English officer. What was now become of their Loudons, and Lindsays, and Warristons, and Hendersons, those daring heroes of holy chivalry, who could out-brave kings and commissioners, and combat royal edicts with bold protestations? The times seem to be strangely changed, and the men now in power were neither to be bullied by big words nor flattered by deceitful promises. They had learned from experience the proper method of curbing unruly tempers, and it may truly be said that Charles 1. had taught Cromwell how to manage the Assemblies of the Scottish kirk1."

THE PERIOD betwixt the Glasgow Assembly and Cromwell's extirpation of the Assemblies has always been reckoned the GOLDEN AGE of the kirk, after it had been purged from malignants and reformed on a "scriptural basis," by the abolition of patronage and the supremacy of the General Assembly; and it was its very "noon-tide" when Cromwell made himself the HEAD OF THE KIRK. Yet during this glorious noon-tide of the golden age, sin abounded to a greater extent than at any time during prelacy. In the "Causes of the Lord's Wrath," published by authority of one of the golden-aged Assemblies, they state that crime had increased to an enormous degree. And, says Dr. M'Crie, "O how loud the call to constancy in Scotland, which

1 Ecclesiastical History, ii. 431.

God had now brought a second time from the furnace of persecution, brighter and purer than ever, and had glorified in the sight of other churches and nations, by making enemies come and worship before her, and to know that he had loved her! But ah! how soon was her fine gold changed! how quickly did the glory depart from all the three churches! 1" And this "Philadelphia which seemed now to be in her flower," is accused by one of her golden-aged commissions of being polluted with the following list of enormous sins:-"1. The gross atheism and ignorance of God and of his word and works, that is in a great part of the inhabitants of the land, which is such that neither law nor gospel, nor the most common and necessary points of truth, are understood or known by many thousands. 2. Horrible looseness and profanity of conversation in all sorts, against the commandments both of the first and second table, which hath so abounded and increased that scarce hath any of the nations exceeded us therein 2."

And the commission issued a tract this year, entitled “A humble acknowledgment of the sins of the ministry of Scotland3," in which they accuse themselves of "Lightness and orofanitity in conversation, unsuitable to the holy calling which they did intend, &c. 4-Ignorance of God, &c.-Exceeding great selfishness in all that we do, acting from ourselves for ourselves.-Refined hypocrisy, desiring to appear what indeed we are not.-Readier to search out and censure faults in others than to see or take them to ourselves. 5-Foolish jesting away time with impertinent and useless discourse, very unseeming the ministers of the gospel.-Covetousness, worldly mindedness, and an inordinate desire after the things of this life, upon which followeth a neglect of the duties of our calling, and our being taken up for the most part with the things of the world.Not preaching Christ in the simplicity of the gospel, nor ourselves the people's servants for Christ's sake.-Preaching of Christ not that the people may know him, but that they may think we know much of him.-Bitterness instead of zeal, in speaking against malignants, sectaries, and other scandalous persons, and unfaithfulness therein.-Too bitter expressions against adversaries in public paper and sermons, foreshewing of reproaches, whereof there is no fruit but irritation 6.-Following of public business, with too much neglect of our flocks"."

1 Testimony of the Associate Synod of Original Seceders, 26.

2 Causes of the Lord's Wrath against Scotland manifested in his sad dispensations.

3 Printed in 1653. 4 Chap. I, Sect. 1.

Chap. III. Sects. 1, 2, 19, 24. Chap. IV. Sects. 2, 25.-Chap. V. Sects. 13, 14, 18, 24. 7 Chap, XII. Sect. 3.

362

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE HEADSHIP OF OLIVER CROMWELL.

PRESBYTERies, and the RESTORATION.

1654.-A new oath.-The Head of the kirk fills the universities with his own friends. Proceedings of Cromwell's supporters. Another Assembly dispersed.-Designs of the remonstrators.-Separate communions.-Purgation. -Two separate synods. - Ordination at Douglas.-A schism.-Retributive justice.-Nobility suffer for sacrilege.-General suffering.- -1655.-Conference proposed between the two religious parties.-Increase of popery.Calamities of the church and state under general Monk.-1656.-Mr. Sharp made a professor.-A commission of the kirk attempted.-Mr. Sharp sent to London-his instructions-Mr. Guthrie sent also-his instructions.1657. -Cromwell gave them audience.-Baillie's letter to Mr. Ashe.-The state of the kirk.-Remonstrators wanted supremacy.-1658.-The designs of the remonstrators defeated.-Public distress.-Death of Cromwell-manner of it.—1659.—Richard Cromwell succeeds.—The Rump.-King's declaration. -Synod at Glasgow.-1660.-Monk's conduct-his declaration to Dr. Price -sends for Mr. Sharp-his address and counsel.-A parliament summoned.— Mr. Sharp follows the general to London-his instructions.-Fears for the restoration of episcopacy-a scheme proposed to prevent it.-The engagement and oath of abjuration annulled.-Dissolution of the Long Parliament.-Mr. Sharp's influence-procures the release of the Scottish prisoners in the Tower. -Monk's instructions to sir John Greenville.-King removes from Brussels to Breda.—Mr. Sharp's letters.-Episcopacy popular.-Douglas's proposal.— Reaction against the covenant.-Baillie's letter to Lauderdale.-Mr. Sharp assures Douglas that episcopacy will be established.—Douglas's anxiety about the establishment of presbytery-his reasons for it.-Provincial synods in Scotland.-Douglas's sermon.-The king proclaimed.-Mr. Sharp sent to Breda-his letter to Douglas.-Douglas's alarm about the prayer book.Baillie's account of affairs. Use of the prayer book restored. - Scottish nobility for episcopacy.—Gillespie's movements—offers to assist in bringing episcopacy into Scotland.-Earl of Middleton made commissioner.-Other appointments. A presbyterian's opinion respecting the changes.-Synods.-Mr. Sharp's return to Scotland-receives a vote of thanks from the presbytery.— Letter from Sharp to Baillie.-Reflections.

1654. THE HEAD of the kirk now imposed a new oath on the republic, which he called an ENGAGEMENT: "I, A. B. do hereby freely promise and engage to be true and faithful to the