Hugh Miller / by W. Keith Leask.

  • William Keith Leask
Date:
[pref. 1896]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hugh Miller / by W. Keith Leask. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the nakedness is hid of the renegade from the nation, and the apostate from its church. Dean Stanley found that ‘ the questionable idols ’ of the Episcopalian sect were Mary Queen of Scots, Montrose, and Dundee. These have never been the idols of the Scottish people: the last, indeed, occupies in its memory the peculiar niche of infamy. The political side of the national religion is expressed no less clearly in facts. The Scottish Crown is held by a contract,^ and the coronation oath is the deliberate expression of it. In his De Jure Regni in 1579, dedi- cated to the king, Buchanan had made this apparent to Europe, and in his Lex Rex^ in 1644, Buchanan was reinforced by Rutherfurd in the doctrine that the people is the source of power, and his officers are merely ministri regni non regis^ ‘ servants of the kingdom, not of the king.’ Startling doctrine this to the slobbering vicegerent of God, conceding to the people acts to be revoked at his pleasure. In the light of ordinary facts, therefore, what are the national covenants of 1580 and 1638, but very simple Magna Chartas or Reform Bills with a religious colouring ? One half of the statements 1 For this important point in its bearing upon the position of the Cameronians, and the ‘Testimony’ of Richard Cameron at the market-place of Sanquhar, June 22, 1680, see Buchanan’s History, xx. 36-47, and Milton’s Temire of Khigs and Magistrates, with the coins of James vi. stamped in 1570. Thus, while James vii.’s creatures, the Bishops, maintained the ‘ divine right ’ of their creator, led by Paterson, the Archbishop of Glasgow, Dalrymple could carry the resolution on the constitutional question of tenure that the king had ‘ forfaulted the throne.’
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