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ence depends, not on the nature of the creed, but on the power of the class. This is very apparent in Scotland, where the clergy, being supreme, did, Protestants though they were, imitate the ascetic, the unsocial, and the cruel doctrines, which, in the Catholic Church, gave rise to convents, fastings, scourgings, and all the other appliances of an uncouth and ungenial superstition.

Indeed, the Scotch divines, in some of their theories, went beyond any section of the Catholic Church, except the Spanish. They sought to destroy, not only human pleasures, but also human affections. They held that our affections are necessarily connected with our lusts, and that we must, therefore, wean ourselves from them as earthly vanities. 197 A Christian had no business with love or sympathy. He had his own soul to attend to, and that was enough for him. Let him look to himself. On Sunday, in particular, he must never think of benefiting others; and the Scotch clergy did not hesitate to teach the people, that on that day it was sinful to save a vessel in distress, and that it was a proof of religion to leave ship and crew to perish.198 They might go; none but their wives and children would suffer, and that was nothing in comparison with breaking the Sabbath. So, too, did the clergy teach, that on no occasion must food or shelter be given to a starving man, unless his opinions were orthodox.199 What need for him to live? Indeed, they taught that it was a sin to tolerate his notions at

197❝A Christian should mortifie his affections, which are his predominant lusts, to which our affections are so much joined, and our soul doth so much go out after." Gray's Spiritual Warfare, p. 29. "That blessed work of weaning of affections from all things that are here." Gray's Great and Precious Promises, p. 86.

199 "One of our more northern ministers, whose parish lies along the coast between Spey and Findorn, made some fishermen do penance for sabbathbreaking, in going out to sea, though purely with endeavour to save a vessel in distress by a storm." Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland, vol. i. p. 173.

199The master of a family may, and ought to, deny an act of humanity or hospitality to strangers that are false teachers." Rutherford's Free Disputation against Pretended Liberty of Conscience, p. 176. "The Holy Ghost forbiddeth the master of every Christian family to owne a hereticke as a guest." Ibid., p. 219. See also p. 235.

all, and that the proper course was, to visit him with sharp and immediate punishment.200 Going yet further, they broke the domestic ties, and set parents against their offspring. They taught the father to smite the unbelieving child, and to slay his own boy sooner than allow him to propagate error.201 As if this were not enough, they tried to extirpate another affection, even more sacred and more devoted still. They laid their rude and merciless hands on the holiest passion of which our nature is capable, the love of a mother for her son. Into that sanctuary, they dared to intrude; into that, they thrust their gaunt and ungentle forms. If a mother held opinions of which they disapproved, they did not scruple

200 We hold that tolleration of all religions is not farre from blasphemy." Rutherford's Free Disputation against Pretended Liberty of Conscience, p. 20. "If wolves be permitted to teach what is right in their own erroneous conscience, and there be no 'Magistrate to put them to shame,' Judg. xviii. 7, and no King to punish them, then godlinesse and all that concernes the first Table of the Law must be marred." Ibid., p. 230. "Wilde and atheisticall liberty of conscience." p. 337. "Cursed toleration." p. 400. See also, in the same work (pp. 110, 244), Rutherford's remarks on the murder of Servetus. In 1645, Baillie, who was then in London, writes, "The Independents here plead for a tolleration both for themselfes and other sects. My Dissuasive is come in time to doe service here. We hope God will assist us to remonstrate the wickedness of such an tolleration." And on account of the Independents wishing to show common charity towards persons who differed in opinions from themselves, Baillie writes next year (1646), "The Independents has the least zeale to the truth of God of any men we know." Baillie's Letters and Journals, vol. ii. pp. 328, 361. Blair, who was in London in 1649, was sorely vexed with "the most illegal, irreligious, and wicked proceedings and actings of the sectarian army;" one of their crimes being the attempt "to ruin religion by their toleration.' Continuation of the Autobiography of Mr. Robert Blair, Minister of St. Andrews, p. 213. For other evidence of this persecuting spirit, see Dickson's Truth's Victory over Error, pp. 159 163, 199-202; Abernethy's Physicke for the Soule, p. 215; Durham's Exposition of the Song of Solomon, p. 147; Durham's Commentarie upon Book of the Revelation, pp. 141, 143, 330; and Shields' Hind let loose, p. 168.

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2016 A third benefit (which is a branch of the former), is zeal in the godly against false teachers, who shall be so tender of the truth and glory of God, and the safety of the Church (all which are endangered by error), that it shall overcome natural affection in them; so that parents shall not spare their own children, being seducers, but shall either by an heroick act (such as was in Phinehas, Numb. xxv. 8), themselves judge him worthy to die, and give sentence and execute it, or cause him to be punished, by bringing him to the Magistrate," &c. "The toleration of a false religion in doctrine or worship, and the exemption of the erroneous from civil punishment, is no more lawful under the New Testament than it was under the Old." An Exposition of the Prophecie of Zechariah, in Hutcheson's Exposition on the Minor Prophets, vol. iii. p. 203, 8vo, 1654.

to invade her household, take away her children, and forbid her to hold communication with them.202 Or if perchance, her son had incurred their displeasure, they were not satisfied with forcible separation, but they laboured to corrupt her heart, and harden it against her child, so that she might be privy to the act. In one of these cases, mentioned in the records of the church of Glasgow, the Kirk-Session of that town summoned before them a woman, merely because she had received into her house her own son, after the clergy had excommunicated him. So effectually did they work upon her mind, that they induced her to promise, not only that she would shut her door against her child, but that she would aid in bringing him to punishment. She had sinned in loving him; she had sinned, even, in giving him shelter; but, says the record, "she promised not to do it again, and to tell the magistrates when he comes next to her."203

She promised not to do it again. She promised to forget him, whom she had borne of her womb and suckled at her breast. She promised to forget her boy, who had ofttimes crept to her knees, who had slept in her bosom, and whose tender frame she had watched over and nursed. All the dearest associations of the past, all that the most exquisite form of human affection can give or receive, all that delights the memory, all that brightens the prospect of life, all vanished, all passed away from the mind of this poor woman, at the bidding of her spiritual masters. At one fell swoop, all were gone. So potent were the arts of these men, that they persuaded the mother to conspire against her son, that she might deliver him up to them. They defiled her nature, by purging it of its love. From that day, her soul was polluted. She was lost to herself, as well as lost to her son.

To hear of

202 Selections from the Registers of the Presbytery of Lanark, pp. x. 33, 56, 63, 65, 73.

203 I copy the exact words from Wodrow's Collections upon the Lives of Ministers of the Church of Scotland, vol. ii. part ii. p. 71. An order had been previously obtained from the government, "requiring the magistrates to expell furth of the Toun all excomunicated persons.

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such things, is enough to make one's blood surge again, and raise a tempest in our inmost nature. But to have seen them, to have lived in the midst of them, and yet not to have rebelled against them, is to us utterly inconceivable, and proves in how complete a thraldom the Scotch were held, and how thoroughly their minds, as well as their bodies, were enslaved.

What more need I say? What further evidence need I bring to elucidate the real character of one of the most detestable tyrannies ever seen on the earth? When the Scotch Kirk was at the height of its power, we may search history in vain for any institution which can compete with it, except the Spanish Inquisition. Between these two, there is a close and intimate analogy. Both were intolerant, both were cruel, both made war upon the finest parts of human nature, and both destroyed every vestige of religious freedom. One difference, however, there was, of vast importance. In political matters, the Church, which was servile in Spain, was rebellious in Scotland. Hence, the Scotch always had one direction in which they could speak and act with unrestrained liberty. In politics, they found their vent. There, the mind was free. And this was their salvation. This saved them from the fate of Spain, by securing to them the exercise of those faculties which otherwise would have lain dormant, if, indeed, they had not been entirely destroyed by that long and enfeebling servitude in which their clergy retained them, and from which, but for this favourable circumstance, no escape would have been open.

CHAPTER VI.

AN EXAMINATION OF THE SCOTCH INTELLECT DURING THE EIGHTEENTH

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complete the history and analysis of the Scotch mind, I have now to examine the peculiar intellectual movement which appeared in the eighteenth century, and which, for several reasons, deserves careful attention. It was essentially a reaction against that theological spirit which predominated during the seventeenth century. Such a reaction would hardly have been possible, except for the fact which I have already noticed, namely, that the political activity which produced the rebellion against the Stuarts, saved the Scotch mind from stagnating, and prevented that deep slumber into which the progress of superstition would naturally have thrown it. The long and stubborn conflict with a despotic government, kept alive a certain alertness and vigour of understanding, which survived the struggle that gave it birth. When the contest was ended, and peace was restored, the faculties which, for three generations, had been exercised in resisting the executive authority, sought other employment, and found another field in which they could disport themselves. Hence it was, that the boldness which, in the seventeenth century, was practical, became, in the eighteenth century, speculative, and produced a literature, which attempted to unsettle former opinions, and to disturb the ancient landmarks of the human mind. The movement was revolutionary, and bore the same relation to ecclesiastical tyranny, which the previous movement had borne to political tyranny. But this new rebellion had one striking characteristic. In nearly every other country, when the intellect has fairly arrayed itself against the exclu

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