tices, which, however common in private life, did not correspond with the gravity of a pastor; and such of them as should be guilty of profaning the Sabbath, of intemperance, or of prophaneness of discourse, were to be immediately deposed. They were cautioned against engaging in secular employments, which might distract their attention from the important duties which they had to perform; they were required, under pain of censure, to reside in their parishes, and to embrace every opportunity, even in company, of promoting, by their conversation, the sacred cause of religion, and the edification of those who looked to them for instruction. After they had thus pointed out what were their errors, and what should be the conduct of the pastors, they assembled, as they had agreed, to renew the covenant, by which they pledged themselves never to forsake what they had sworn to defend. Having met in one of the churches, they were exhorted to have recourse to private meditation and prayer; they humbled themselves in the sight of God-they became deeply agitated-they then listened to a sermon adapted to the occasion of their meeting; and before they dismissed, holding up their hands, and calling on the name of God, they bound themselves, as he should enable them to walk in the profession of the truth.' p. 52-54, Vol. II.

As James felt an inordinate desire to restore the Popish lords, he endeavoured, by the means of Robert Bruce, to obtain the sanction of the clergy; and as Bruce told him he would oppose the measure, he summoned a convention to consider how he should treat his rebellious subjects. To this convention a petition was presented by Huntly, who, with his associates, bad secretly returned, praying to be allowed to live quietly in any place, and offering security for his conduct. After Melvil, who had obtruded himself upon the convention, had denounced, as traitors to Christ, his church, and the country, all who should approve of admitting the lords to favour, he was ordered to withdraw, and the king's proposal of granting pardon to the nobles was adopted. This resolution, so contrary to the sentiments of the nation, produced a strong ferment among the ministers, and, as they were not remarkable for policy of conduct, pushed them into excesses very detrimental to their cause. Commissioners of the preceding assembly, having in vain remonstrated with the king, drew together ministers from all quarters of the kingdom. This meeting issued a circular, exciting the people to resistance, and appointed a committee, called the Council for the Church, to watch over ecclesiastical affairs. The king, though irritated by these proceedings, was led, by the timidity of his nature, to attempt an accommodation, and he proposed to the committee, whether, if the lords satisfied the church, he might grant them indulgence. He was told that the nobles ought to be banished before any attention could be paid to their offers, and that, as they had been condemned by the law of God, and the sentence of parliament, it would be contrary to Scripture to pardon them.

This being reported to the king, highly excited his displeasure, and which the case of Black tended still further to increase. This man having, in a sermon, scandalously abused the king, queen, the lords of the council, and session, and called the English queen an Atheist, was summoned before the privy council. His brethren advised him to decline the king's jurisdiction. A deed was framed for this purpose; and having been sent to the different presbyterics to be subscribed, it was signed by four hundred persons. As the king was determined to maintain his authority, and the ministers were not less resolved to support their pretensions, the contest approached towards a crisis.

The king issued a proclamation, ordering the most active ministers to leave the city, and prohibiting such conventions as that which had for some time time been held. The clergy were not shaken in their purpose by this exertion of the sovereign power; they resolved to obey God rather than man; and they enjoined, that from the pulpit their privileges should, upon the first opportunity, be in the most confident strain, and in the full extent asserted. New resolutions as to the mode of defending Black, were taken; and another declinature was, upon his again being summoned before the council, composed and circulated. p. 71. Vol. II. Various attempts were made by the king to accommodate the differences; but Black, supported by his brethren, remained inflexible, and was found guilty. Matters were now fast hastening to tumult and disorder; and interested men, who had little concern about the issue of the differences between the king and the church, but who were eager, for their own purposes, to promote confusion, put the match to the train, which had been laid. On the morning of the 17th of December, (1596) a day memorable in the history of the church of Scotland, insinuations or assertions were circulated, that Huntly had been privately at court, and had prevailed upon the king to issue an order, which had just been intimated, that twenty-four of the citizens, best affected to the ministers, should leave Edinburgh; the clergy were alarmed by assurances, that, if they did not now remain firm, Popery would be introduced; whilst the same fomenters of discord represented to the king, and the Octavians, that the houses of the ministers were guarded, and that it was requisite to take every precaution for saving themselves from the fury of the populace. In this agitated state of men's minds, divine worship commenced, and Balquancal, the officiating minis. ter, who believed the reports that had been carefully sent to him, warned his audience of their danger,-complained of the treacherous forms of the court, accused some of the leading men in the kingdom as having occasioned the present deplorable state of the church, and recalling to the minds of those who heard him, how the noblemen and barons had struggled for the Reformation, he exhorted the lords and gentlemen, who were present, to meet in one of the churches, after service, and to assist the ministry with their advice. The meet

ing immediately took place, and Bruce, having expatiated upon the late interesting events, desired those who had assembled, to hold up their hands, and swear that they would defend religion against all op

posers. Commissioners were sent to the king, who was sitting with the lords of session, and whilst they were absent, passages of scripture were read, calculated to inflame the people, who could not see the impropriety of the manner in which these passages were applied. Amongst the persons carrying the supplication, was Lord Lindsay, who, when the king asked how they had dared to meet, with much warmth replied, that in a season of so much hazard, he thought they might lawfully do more than petition. James, apprehending from this answer, and from the furious manner in which the multitude were pressing into the hall, that some violent assault was intended, immediately withdrew, and ordered the gates to be shut. It was instantly circulated through the city, that he had given an unfavourable answer to the requests which had been offered, and Lindsay, upon his return, audaciously said,-Let us now stay together, and advertise our friends and the favourers of religion, and take a decided part against our enemies, for it shall be either theirs or ours. Upon this some cried to arms; others exclaimed,-The sword of the Lord and of Gideon.' p. 74-76 Vol. II.

The people, who were wrought up to a high pitch of fury, were soothed by the chief magistrate, and induced to separate without further outrage. As the ministers persisted in their opposition, proceeding to still greater violence in their petitions to the sovereign, he issued a proclamation, detailing the insults that had been offered him, and exposing the treasonable conduct of the ministers. This proclamation made a deep impression on the public mind. The ministers perceiving that the zeal of the people declined, endeavoured to revive the flame. A party was formed to maintain the liberties of the church; but Lord Hamilton, who was invited to put himself at the head of it, gave information of the design to the king. The ministers had greatly impaired their influence; because, though their cause good, their zeal was without discretion, and their measures were taken and pursued without prudence.

(To be continued.)

Art. III. Lectures on the Principles and Institutions of the Roman Catholic Religion: with an Appendix, containing Historical and Critical Illustrations. By Joseph Fletcher, MA. Svo. pp. 347. Ixviii. Price 9s. Conder, 1817.

THREE hundred years are on the very point of being com

pleted, since the inglorious vassalage of Europe was relieved, and a part of its freedom restored, at the period of Luther's first resistance to the tyranny of Papal Rome. His successes were the signal for an extensive resumption of ancient rights: nor was. the opportunity lost. Many nations disowned the authority which had long bowed them down, and proclaimed themselves free from its intolerable oppression. They soon learned the value of their achievements; and in the possession of the benefits which they now began to enjoy, as the fruits of their indepen

dence, they could feel no inclination to resume the yoke of their former tyrants, who were resolved on compelling, if possible, their submission. Incessant struggles to maintain the positions already carried, and to prevent their being reconquered, have been demanded by the ceaseless warfare against freedom, which its ancient and inveterate foe has supported Popery, irreconcilable to its losses, and filled with malicious fury against the abettors of the Protestant cause, whom it will never spare, will never cease to be the enemy of Christian freedom: its hostility is. settled and resolved. Never since the great and righteous separation from the Romish despotism, in the early part of the sixteenth century, has the genius of liberty been permitted to repose. Correct in his apprehension of danger, and alert to announce its approaches, he gives now the note of preparation,' and calls every Protestant Christian to the post and to the service which are allotted him, and in which he may most effectually employ the proper means of resisting the most odious, and the most horrid superstition which ever asserted its dominion over mankind.

Of Popery it is impossible for us to speak in other terms. It is in vain that its enormities are thrown back on past times, and imputed to the spirit of distant ages. In the accomplishment of its purposes, Popery must be exactly that which it has been. Its will is to destroy science, to extinguish knowledge, to annihilate opposition, and to reign in darkness and terror. The proofs of its intentions are too luminous not to be perceived; and Protestants, we trust, are too well instructed in the knowledge of its arts and machinations, to permit their suspicions to be lulled asleep by any assurances of its abettors, that there exists no reason for alarm. The most temperate partisans of Roman Catholicism, cannot deny that it is founded on principles which proscribe the exercise of every other form of religion, and that every other religious profession is incompatible with its laws; they cannot deny that were its means equal to its wishes, Protestantism would be put down by violence as a heresy They know that the Church of Rome is radically and incurably intolerant, and that its one and indivisible' object, is to destroy for ever the right and power of conscience to make religion the subject of its inquiries. They may palliate and explain; they may refer us to their own liberal sentiments and feelings as they please; but they know that the power to which, in their comunion with the Romish hierarchy, they submit, and must submit, has taken an eternal vow never to tolerate any other creed than that which it is determined to dictate to every indidual of mankind, could it provide for itself so large a field of action; and that its operations are bounded by narrower limits, is assuredly not owing to its indifference. Every creature under

heaven, who bears the image of his Maker, and whose rational nature stamps him the heir of immortality, should feel himself under the perpetual obligations which his origin and his destiny import, to resist a thraldom the basest and the most terrible to which the human soul can be enslaved. Popery is incompatible with the inalienable rights of men; nor is it less so with the will of God, and the rule of his final judgement.

With these views of the inherent evils and tendencies of Popery, we should only dissemble, were we to deny that we cannot regard its possible increase without alarm, or that we wish to see the means of opposing its progress most effectively employed. Those means include no proceedings against which the avowals of some Roman Catholic writers in this country, contain an objection; and the most important of them is the principle for which they are personally the advocates, though they do not hold it with the approbation of their Catholic superiors,-that all mankind in every place and under every circumstance, are at perfect liberty to choose their religious creed, and to adopt their religious practices The duties which conscience owes to itself, are not to be estimated according to parallels of latitude and lines of longitude on the globe; if therefore men judge for themselves, as to their religious profession, in Britain, let them exercise such judgement in Italy, in Spain, in Portugal, in France, in all states and kingdoms. Let no political incapacity, no personal disability in any of these countries, be associated with religious profession. Let all civil honours, emoluments, and offices, be every where conferred on men as able and meretorious citizens. Then we should have realized the very state and circumstances on which the writers to whom we have referred, have so eloquently expatiated, as the desirable condition in which the human race should be settled ;and then we should see an end to Popery.

The Author whose work is now before us, is a man exactly to our mind, in regard to the principles which he asserts, and the spirit which pervades them. We recognize in every page of his book, a correct conception of the nature of revealed religion, and of the purposes for which it was imparted. We meet with no passages which allow of a construction unfavourable to the full personal exercise of the rights of the human mind. The sentiment that religion is matter of consideration and feeling, for the understanding and the heart of man, apart from the control of all others of his species, is clearly and conspicuously displayed; the whole argument of the work is directed against the violation of this principle. Of the Papal religion he uniformly speaks under the full conviction of its outrage in pretension, and its enormities in practice, as every honourable and humane mind must express its disgust and abhorrence on inspecting the undisputed records

5