Scottish episcopacy past and present / by Alexander Thomson.

  • Alexander Thomson
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Scottish episcopacy past and present / by Alexander Thomson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    taught ill the bitter school of adversity, would respect their liberties both in Church and State. They had, however, been so far prudent that they recpiired from Charles II. solemn declarations of his intentions, and especially as to his disposition to favour Presbytery. This was chiefly effected by his signing the National League and Covenant, a step which has been loudly condemned by many, but which, in point of fact, was the smallest security which the people of Scotland could pos¬ sibly ask from their exiled prince, and nothing more than our beloved Sovereign, Queen Victoria, gave, when she signed the Declaration required by the constitution in favour of Presbytery in Scotland, at the verv moment of her accession to the throne. Not satisfied with simply subscribing the Covenant in June, 1650, the unhappy prince, in the following August, most deliber¬ ately and of his own accord subscribed a still more explicit de¬ claration, “ that he would have no enemies but the enemies of the Covenant, and no friends but the friends of the Covenant.” When the Eestoration took place, ten years later, his Scottish subjects naturally thought that no further pledges were required; they cordially welcomed their sovereign, and were rewarded by eight and twenty years of cruel persecution, being the exact term of years during which Episcopacy was established for the second tiqie in Scotland. ^ Charles II. may be said to have spent his whole reign in endea¬ vouring to wash out his subscription to the Covenant in the blood and tears of the best and mostNoyal of his subjects, for such were the men whom he so cruelly ^jersecuted and hunted to the death, as if they had been noxious beasts of prey. The pleasure-loving king and his dissolute courtiers could never realise the solemn truth that there can be no true, enlightened, steadfast loyalty to an earthly sovereign which is not based on perfect loyalty to the King of kings. Charles’s reign at length passed away, and the few years per¬ mitted to his successor were devoted to carrying on more openly the scheme for the extirpation of Presbyterianism and Protestant¬ ism in Scotland. The only permanent and enduring result of both reigns was, to impress on the mass of the people in Scotland an On the former occasion, the period was of like duration, namely, from 1610 to 1638.
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