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do we enter on the consideration of the defence set up for the infamous Sharp, the Presbyterian traitor, the Episcopal persecutor. From the Restoration to the Revolution the prelatic party, according to Mr Stephen, seldom if ever went wrong,the sufferers never did right. The former were long-suffering and tolerant, and very models of propriety and piety;-the latter were rebels and traitors, fanatics and hypocrites. The act recissory was a radical remedy for a desperate disease.' Vol. ii. P. 423. It was the only instrument by which the royal government could have been relieved from its multiplied embarrassments, and the Earl of Middleton deserves great credit for his firmness and resolution in effecting it.' P. 520. It was right and proper that Argyle, and Guthrie, and Warristoun, should suffer, (pp. 424, 515;) and the following daring sentence is pronounced: When the noble army of Christ's holy martyrs are mustered, it is much to be feared that these three unrepentant agents of that masterpiece of the devil and his agents the Jesuits, the COVENANT, will not be entitled even to brevet rank in that sacred band.' Vol. ii. p. 515. The old assertion that many of the Covenanters might have saved their lives, had they chosen to use the Scriptural expression, God save the king, is repeated; and no intimation of the fact is given, that though the words be scriptural, the meaning attached to them by the Privy Council was most unscriptural. P. 566. There is one admission made (Vol. ii. p. 612,) which somewhat startles us. We are surprised, not at the fact, which was familiar to us, but at its admission, 'There was no liturgy, or appointed form of prayer in the public worship, the late opposition having discouraged any new attempt that way. There was no liturgy,-therefore there could be no social prayer, therefore there could be no looking for the blessing promised in the words,' Again I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven;' this, at least, is the author's reasoning elsewhere.

"It cannot be doubted that this gracious promise belongs to public prayers, such as are made by several persons, but at the least by two; and it is plain also, that it is to such public prayers, where two or more persons shall agree together beforehand as to what they shall ask; or in other words, to a national preconceived liturgy." Vol. i. p. 138.

The account of the re-establishment of Presbytery is given in the usual prelatic fashion, on which we cannot dwell. Occasionally we meet with such a sentiment as the following:

"Noah's ark was a pattern and pledge of Christ's church, and the whole church, which then only consisted of eight persons, were saved

by water, which typically showed that the Christian church is saved by baptism. Those countless myriads who were outside the ark, to some of whom Christ afterwards preached in paradise the consolation of their redemption, perished in the raging ocean of the deluge: the parallel will suggest what great danger there will be to those who cut themselves off from the church." Vol. iii. p. 455.

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The fourth volume consists principally of a narrative of the struggle for supremacy among the different parties, into which the Scottish Episcopalians were divided, during the last century, and of their contentions about the wretched college scheme.' P. 255. The details given are a strange commentary on the frequent invitations addressed to Presbyterians to enter THE CHURCH, and partake of her rest. Mr Stephen is compelled to admit that they had external peace, (p. 243,) but within she was suffering from the ambition and secularity of her own ministers.' (Ibid.) And defective as his statements are, even from them enough may be learned to show, that had the Prelatic party acted in the spirit of the prayer of their own Litany, in which they ask to be kept from all sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion,' they might have enjoyed the fullest toleration. But they were rebels almost to a man in 1715. This, if not admitted, is not denied by our author, p. 116. He challenges Wodrow's statement that there were no Presbyterians joined with Mar, but allows to pass uncontradicted that historian's assertion, that the whole Liturgy-men in Scotland' were with him. Their ministers corresponded with the exiled prince,' as the Pretender is styled, (p. 113 and elsewhere,) and about the year 1722, Lockhart, the agent of the Jacobites, contrived to exercise a considerable degree of influence over the bishops, and with some dexterity of management he contrived to get them to admit of James's conges d'elire. P. 172. And we afterwards read of the repeated royal exhortations which they received from abroad, (p. 219;) and, notwithstanding all this, so little were they interfered with by the government of the day, that, writing of the rebellion 1745, Bishop Walker, in a passage quoted by our author, (p. 324,) says, The church was in such a state previous to that ill-advised measure, as to have handsome chapels, well attended, throughout the country.' But again they made common cause with the partisans of the house of Stuart, and a stringent statute was passed against them, but assuredly not against them as Episcopalians, but as traitors. The result of 'that persecuting act' may be stated in the words of Dr Russell, as quoted by Mr Stephen, (p. 343.) At the present day the traveller in one part of Scotland may visit the wild caves in which

VOL. XIX NO. 11.

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the heroes of the Covenant shunned the pursuit of Claverhouse and Dalzell; and in another, especially in the towns beyond the Forth, he may see the rude garrets and antiquated apartments, wherein, during their period of dejection, were wont to assemble a few concealed worshippers belonging to the Scottish Episcopal church.' Yes, the Presbyterians wandered in deserts and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth;-willingly, most willingly, did our fathers, during the eight and twenty years' persecution, render to Cæsar what was Cæsar's, though they refused to render to him what was God's,-they had but the alternative to suffer or to sin, and, with the Lord's help, they preferred the former. Read even our author's account of the Episcopal party, and one sees that had they avoided the sin of rebellion, they would not have been interfered with. But we hurry on. The events of the last few years are so recorded that we feel no desire to dwell on the narrative. We have seldom read such a mass of error and misrepresentation, of gratuitous assumption and intolerance. Witness what he says of Dr Duff's mission to India, (p. 511,) of Mr Drummond, Sir W. Dunbar, Mr Hull, Mr Baptist Noel, &c. &c. The Establishment is but a dormitory, in his opinion, and now there is peace between it and the Government, the vacant livings being filled up from among the long expectant probationers, and the quiet well-disposed ministers of the Establishment got rid of a swarm of hornets, that had stung them nearly to dissolution, ever since the death of their last powerful and respectable leader, Dr John Inglis.' P. 614. The ministers of the Free Church are outcasts, (p. 613,) but his fiercest wrath is reserved for the schismatics who have dared to disturb the rest of THE CHURCH, and of whom he tells us they imagine that they only separate from the Scottish branch of the catholic church, but in reality they have separated from the whole Anglican catholic church, as well as from the church universal. They stand alone, and are cast forth as a brand, and are withered." P 643.

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We give, in conclusion, two quotations, the former to illustrate our author's liberality, and the latter his catholicity of sentiment.

"About this period (1820) the peace of the Church was broken up by the introduction of the low Calvinistic doctrines of that which was absurdly called the Evangelical party in the Church of England. This was occasioned by the sudden vacancy in St Paul's chapel, in a steep dirty alley, called Carrubber's Close, in the High Street of Edinburgh; and as the Hon. and Rev. Gerard Noel happened to be there on a visit, he of fered to officiate till some one was appointed to the living. He sought and procured the appointment of the Rev. Edward Craig, who was afterwards a stipendiary curate in Northamptonshire. These two evangelical

clergymen commenced and continued an assault upon all the catholic doctrines of the church, and they introduced such contention and discord, both amongst the clergy and laity, as has had the most injurious consequences to the church. Attracted by their popular and anticatholic preaching, a great number of Presbyterians became nominal members of the church in the way described above,* but in order to hear the sermon, they were obliged to endure the prayers. In the course of time consesequently they have become habituated to the Church service; nevertheless for the most part they are only hearers of the word, and still retain their Presbyterian prejudices." P. 499.

"The establishment of a Reformed Catholic chapel in the city of Rome, and of a Catholic bishop in the city of Paris, are two events that may be productive of the greatest and most beneficial effects to the Christian world. Both these missions, if we may so speak, have originated with the Catholic church of Scotland, and in both cases alike she disclaims all intention of schism or of interference with the national Catholic churches of these places. The bishop in the one city, and the priest in the other, were not established for the purpose of making converts, or of ministering to the native population, but simply as overseers of the British residents in those cities, and of watching over their spiritual interests. I have heard the late Bishop Walker say, that the Pope privately assured him, that, although he could not give him ostensibly permission, yet he said he might take leave, and his holiness would take care that neither he nor his congregation should be disturbed in the exercise of their religious rites, so long as they did not offend the religious prejudices of the people. Bishop Luscomb pretends to no jurisdiction in France, beyond the English or American congregations that voluntarily place themselves under his episcopal authority, and the English priest in Rome confines his ministration to the Anglo-catholics who happen to reside there for the time being. There is no infringement of the just rights of either the Archbishop of Paris, or the Patriarch of Rome, and therefore no schism; but each may with justice say, with the ancient and purer Roman church, one God, one Christ, one Bishop."" P. 517.

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But we must have done. We have not set ourselves to combat the opinions of our author,-to state is to refute them. We have not sought to defend the characters of those whom he has maligned, his assault can injure no one-telumque imbelle sine ictu conjecit. We have given a specimen of his assertions, and

* We presume that Mr Stephen here refers to a dictum of his own in a preceding page, 'When Presbyterians wish to be added to the church, they think no other mode of admission necessary than to take a kneeling, or a pew, in one of the Episcopal churches, and hear sermons. They never think that the only way of admission to the church is through the gate of holy baptism, and that it is their highest privilege to be so admitted. That species of converts bring into the church all their Presbyterian prejudices, &c. &c. Of this sort of converts the schismatical meeting is composed, which was recently opened in Edinburgh, in defiance of the bishop of that see,' p. 492, and then follow some remarks on the duty of instructing all on the marks of the church.

of the unblushing way in which oft-refuted falsehoods are again brought forward as so many undeniable facts, and, having done so, we feel warranted in saying that we have only skimmed the surface; it had been easy to multiply ten-fold, yea, fifty-fold, the proofs of his ignorance and historical misrepresentation. The great question between Presbytery and Episcopacy, and the still greater between Christianity and Tractarianism, we enter not upon; our author's acquaintance with these subjects is, apparently, on a par with his familiarity with the facts of Scottish ecclesiastical history, and that, as we have seen, is most slight, and altogether superficial.

ARTICLE VI.-Select Biographies. Edited for the Wodrow Society, chiefly from MSS. in the Advocate's Library. By Rev. W. K. TWEEDIE. Vol. I. Edinburgh: 1845.

THIS Volume is eminently seasonable. It lays bare,—so far as any human record can lay bare,—the hidden life of some of those gigantic men whom the Lord once used, to do a great work in Scotland. Welsh and Livingstone are types of the class. We have the door of God's pavilion opened, and get a glimpse of what is passing there. The Davids and Daniels are seen walking before the Lord. Voices are heard, whispering in an unseen, though unmistakeably a most patient, ear. The men have gone in on a momentous errand. They are the Lord's ambassadors to an outcast world; and they are seeking their instructions from their King. Nor is it enough that they get their instructions; they need also their credentials, credentials which the outcasts to whom they are sent shall own. The credentials are the accompanying presence of the Lord. presence go not with me, carry me not up hence.'

If thy

It is not often that the volumes of such a Society as the Wodrow present to their readers a tableau vivant. Like the spectral figures with which superstition has peopled the deserted halls and battlements where the architectural antiquary lingers, there is a death-like gauntness about the same personage's littérature, which seems to intimate that it is not designed for the companionship of living men. The volume before us is scarcely open to this charge. True, these holy and reverend worthies, whom it has evoked from the tomb, walk before us in the cerements of their old abode. The grave-clothes are still hanging about them. But they are 'living' men notwithstanding. And they seem to accost the Marys and Marthas, the Peters and Johns,

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