sacre of the Protestants at Paris) and if they dissembled, it was hypocrisy.

The resentment or despair of James led him to adopt a very. questionable measure. This was to make his escape, by flight, from the lords who had constituted themselves his council, and by whom he was guarded as a prisoner. By the wisdom of Sir James Melvil, the evils which could hardly fail to have attended such a step, were completely prevented, and the king saw himself once more at liberty to choose his advisers, and to take some share in the government of his kingdom. It was scarcely to be expected that he would totally forget the galling treatment which he had sustained at the hands of the confederated lords, and by their means, at the hands of the clergy; but in giving way to his feelings he seems to have exercised only as much severity towards the latter class of men as roused their opposition without subduing it. Several of them took refuge in the town of Berwick, whence they corresponded with their congregations at Edinburgh, and kept alive all their animosi ties; while the means which were employed by the episcopal body were so feeble and ill concerted that the bolder projects contemplated by the king only involved him in greater embarrasment. The archbishop of St. Andrews, who was deficient either in firmness or in principle when his antagonists prevailed, now came forward with compulsory statutes and urgent requisitions for canonical obedience; but the majority of the ministers, trusting, perhaps, that things would soon take a turn in their favour, or determined to sacrifice all worldly considerations to the sense of duty, refused to sign the articles by which it was meant to give to episcopacy a solid and permanent establishment. A great number preferred a temporary exile in England, whither the lords who distrained the person of the king, had also retired; and as only a short time elapsed before James was again compelled to submit to these rebellious nobles at the head of an armed force, the exiled ministers returned to their charges with increased influence and reputation. This event paved the way for a severe retribution upon the head of the pusillanimous and versatile archbishop. He was cited before the Synod of Fife, by whom he was intemperately and informally excommunicated; and it was not until he had presented a most humiliating acknowledgment of his errors, promised to behave better in time coming, and to submit himself in all things to the General Assembly, that he was restored. Of these violent measures Melvilk was at once the instigator and the guide; he disliked Adamson, who, as archbishop, was his ecclesiastical superior, and he hoped to bury under his fall the cause of the Church, in which he held the most exalted station.

Amid these disputes and altercations of the Clergy, James found that a determination had been formed by the English court to put to death his unfortunate mother, and, in the anguish of his heart, he ordered the ministers to pray for her, that she might be illuminated by divine truth, and saved from the danger with which she was threatened. "This order, it might be imagined," says Dr. Cook, "would have been cheerfully obeyed by men professing to be the disciples of a Master who died for sinners, and the teachers of a religion expressing the utmost tenderness for the sufferings of mankind; but with the honourable exception of Lindesay at Leith, and the king's own ministers, they all refused. The king was shocked by this conduct, so in-consistent with humanity and Christianity, and he appointed a particular day for offering solemn petitions to God in behalf of the queen, commanding the archbishop of St. Andrew's to officiate in one of the Churches of Edinburgh. With an indecency of contempt which merits the severest censure, the preachers united to defeat the intention of their sovereign, and prevailed upon: Cowper, one of their number, to ascend the pulpit before the arrival of the primate. When the king entered the Church, he expressed his displeasure, but said that, if Cowper would perform the duty enjoined, he might proceed. With an awful profanation of religion which fills the truly pious mind with horror, this man, who had already determined how he was to act, and had occupied the place which he filled for the purpose of gratifying his brethen, answered, that he would speak as the Spirit of God directed him; and, when he was forced from the pulpit, that he might inflame the passions of the people, cried out-This day shall be a witness against the king on the great day of the Lord. Some tumult was naturally occasioned by this revolting. scene; but after the first agitation had subsided, the congregation yielded to the suggestions of compassion, and deeply affected by the sermon of the archbishop, who most seasonably and eloquently discoursed upon the duty of praying for all men, they condemned the violence of their pastor.'

The Scottish king must have been very little disposed to invest with the dignity and power of an establishment, men who seemed to take delight in thwarting all his plans and in opposing all his desires. The time, however, was not now far distant when James was induced to support their pretensions, and accede to their wishes for a parliamentary sanction to all their ecclesiastical arrangements. This change was brought about by various circumstances. The movements of the popish lords in Scotland, supposed to be directed by the influence of the Spanish monarch, and the threats of conquest and extermination which preceded the sailing of the famous Armada, strengthened very considerably

considerably the Presbyterian interest in Scotland. Love for his country suggested to the king the propriety of yielding, for a time, to the prejudices of the popular party, and as the polity recommended by the ministers seemed to be farther removed than even the modified episcopacy which then subsisted, from the practices of the Romish church, presbyterianism was regarded by the people as the surest defence against the return of papal tyranny and superstition. To this cause must be added the favourable impression made on the mind of his Majesty, by the... loyal conduct of the preachers during his absence in Denmark, whither he had sailed to receive his youthful Queen. At all events he appears to have forgotten much of their harsh and iusolent behaviour, or to have resolved to cajole them with hypocritical professions; for, in the Assembly of 1590, he made a speech expressive of his gratitude, which he concluded in the following words." I praise God that I was born in such a time as in the time of the light of the Gospel-to such a place as to be king of such a kirk, the sincerest kirk of the world. The kirk of Geneva keep Pasch and Yule: What have they for them? They have no institution. As for our neighbour kirk in Eng-· land, their service is an evil said mass in English,-they want nothing of the mass but the liftings. I charge you, my good people, ministers, doctors, elders, nobles, gentlemen and barons, to stand to your purity, and to exhort the people to do the same; and I, forsooth, so long as I brook my life and crown, shall maintain the same against all deadly." The ministers did not fail to profit by this new light which had dawned in the royal understanding; they ceased not, from time to time, to petition him with respect both to the patrimony of the Church and to the form of ecclesiastical government. In relation to the former, the king had now very little in his power, for the nobility, some years prior to this date, had obtained an act of parliament to legalize the fruits of their rapacity; but, as to the latter, he had much to grant, and all he could grant was bestowed;-it went the full length of substituting, by a formal statute, the presbyterian for the episcopal polity, in the National Church. This took place in the month of June, 1592, and it forms a remarkable epoch in the history of the kirk of Scotland. James lived deeply to repent his facility, as he afterwards termed it; but it must be admitted in: his behalf, that the current of popular feeling had turned itself very powerfully against the order of bishops, as well from the remembrance of what they had seen, in the superstitious and im moral hierarchy of the ancient establishment, as from the danger, which they had continually before their eyes, that popish emissaries might again pervert the nation, and engraft upon a system of worship and discipline, in some points resembling their own,

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all the mummery and folly which the reformation had exploded. The nobles, too, at this date, would be led by their avarice to oppose the restoration of the episcopal order; for had archbishops and bishops been replaced in their sees, it would have become requisite to strip the lay impropriators of their ill-gotten booty, with the view of maintaining the superior clergy in the rank and style which became them.-We cannot enter into the reflections of our author on this important event, which are, in the spirit of all his remarks, just, impartial, and instructive. Perhaps his moderation, when speaking of Andrew Melvil, does not carry, our concurrence along with it but Dr. Cook is never swift to condemn; and, we believe, the more one reads history and studies human nature, the more disposed will one become to judge mercifully and to abstain from vehement upbraidings. We are therefore, we trust, as much inclined, generally speaking, as our author is, to make every allowance for the frailties inseparable from men; and, in the case before us, for the particular circumstances in which the leading characters were called into action. The reformation in Scotland having originated in jealousy of the crown, and being carried on through almost all its stages, in direct opposition to the wishes of the sovereign, it must necessarily follow that, in perusing the annals in which its progress is recorded, we shall have much difficulty in drawing the line between patriotism and rebellion-between what is due to the civil authorities and to an enlightened sense of public advantage. Nor are we inclined to deny that there was much sincerity displayed by several of the reformers, even when they were prosecuting their measures upon the most intolerant maxims. We only insist upon calling things by their own names, and, accordingly, to depict the men of the sixteenth century as being completely igno rant of the true principles of toleration, as rude and ferocious, and as never possessing power which they did not attempt to employ for the purpose of persecution. To this we will add, notwithstanding the eulogies which are now so lavishly poured forth on the worthies of those times, that some of the figuring men in the Scottish reformation were selfish and unprincipled, urged on by powerful antipathies, and, on various momentous occasions, much more attentive to the end than to the means which they employed to accomplish it. Besides, they appear to have derived an unnatural kind of pleasure from opposing the government even when opposition was unnecessary, and even when the purpose which they affected to have in view was, in their own estimation, not worth contending for. Nothing could illustrate more strikingly this view of their character than the fact which we are about to mention.

VOL. V. FEB. 1816.

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The Act of 1592 is regarded, by all the historians of the Scottish Church, as having established, on a legal foundation, the presbyterian polity; and yet we find the General Assembly, in the following year, adopting, of their own accord, the leading principle of episcopacy, and actually proceeding to legislate upon it. While contending for that parity upon which their ecclesiastical government properly rests, the ministers had abolished the office of commissioner, the duties of which corresponded very nearly to those of a bishop, and were indeed usually discharged by men of the prelatical orders: but no sooner had they ob tained a parliamentary sanction for their favourite measure, than they abandoned its fundamental, characteristic doctrine, and, with singular inconsistency, re-appointed commissioners " to visit and try the doctrine, life, conversation, diligence, and fidelity of the pastors in the presbyteries, and also to ascertain whether there be any of the beneficed ministers within the same not residing, who have no just cause of non-residence, &c."

Indeed it is very manifest that the great body of clergy, of that period, had no decided preference for presbyterianism, and that they ultimately allowed themselves to be carried to the extreme distance, at which the Church of Scotland now stands, from the primitive order of ecclesiastical polity, by their dread of popery, and by their opposition to the civil government.-The commotions excited by Huntly and the other popish lords, the intrigues of the Spanish court, and the suspicion that James was secretly attached to the persons of the rebellious nobles, roused the ministers to a high degree of indignation, and led the fiery spirits, who se conded their views, to the adoption of such councils as completely counteracted all his Majesty's plans relative to the Church, and even shook for a moment the stability of his throne. Upon discovering in the king an inclination, as they thought, to pardon the popish lords, the Assembly appointed a number of ministers to wait constantly upon the court, and to watch the measures of government; and when he was induced to recal these nobles from their temporary exile, commissioners were sent from all parts of the kingdom to protect the interests of the Church; who, immediately assuming to themselves the appropriate title of Ecclesiastical Council, began to act with as much freedom and independence as if they had been constituted by warrant from the crown. In the exercise of this unconstitutional authority, they summoned before them Seaton, one of the king's advisers, and President of the Court of Session, to answer for his conduct in having favoured the recal of the Earl of Huntly; and, in the course of their deliberations on this question, they gave as their judgment, that the king could not, contrary to God's word, and the decision of the estates, shew the banished lords any favour.

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