the guide of the Church in such cases; and at the time it was agreed to-to use the language of Williamson's "Personal Testimony"-it "was a step of reformation beyond what was attained in our former purest times." It is a good sign in any Church to be strict in her rules of discipline. The prevailing error and evil have lain upon the other sidethe side of relaxation.

While the Form of Process bears testimony to the Church's character, the success of the union with England testifies to her power. It is well known that that union, which has been the source of so many commercial and other blessings to Scotland, was, in the first instance, much opposed on various grounds-nay, was the source of no small evil to the northern division of the island. Such was the hostility, that had it not been for the influence of leading ministers in the Church, it could not have been carried into effect. Accordingly, the best informed historians give the Church the credit of that most important measure. Her courage in resisting the wishes of so many of her own people, and in encountering the perils of an untried experiment, in which, as the event has proved, she might be a sufferer, shows how warm was her attachment to the Protestant succession, and how much she was prepared to risk for the Protestant cause. Scottish nobles might receive bribes of money to obtain their acquiescence-some of them so low as £10 or £12-but the Church was untainted. It was upon principle that she not only acquiesced, but yielded her support to the Union; and in this she presents a striking contrast even to the aristocracy, who were glad to receive among them some £400,000, apart from which Scotland might long have remained an independent kingdom. How different from the noble minded men who sacrificed all, even life itself, for their principles!

But while the character and operation of the Church of Scotland, as a whole, were so favourable, and while her power was justly so considerable, we are not to imagine that her course from the Revolution was smooth and easy. She had many difficulties and adverse influences with which to contend. A Revolution almost always leaves a number of keen and exasperated parties behind it. The expedition to Darien, in which Scotland suffered-not a little through the jealousy of her southern neighbour-was most disastrous. Though the circulating capital of Scotland did not exceed £800,000, not less than one-half of it was turned into Da

rien stock; and, first, an expedition of twelve hundred persons, embracing three hundred sons of the best families; and then another of thirteen hundred, went forth to the shores of America. All may be said to have perished. This, in various ways, must have been very injurious. We have remarked that the opposition to the Union was strong, general, and protracted. Only a solitary petition, from the town of Ayr, could at first be obtained in its favour. Its influence upon Scotland's trade was at first unfavourable; and not less than forty years elapsed before its full advantages began to be realized. Besides, there were the constant plotting and threatened usurpation of the Popish Pretender, aided by France. In the meantime, while Queen Anne did so much for church extension and endowment in England, nothing was done for Scotland by the Crown or Parliament for the same object. It was resolved, in 1710, that fifty churches should be built in London, within the Bills of Mortality; and a sum of £350,000 was granted by Parliament for the purpose, which proved to be a very popular measure. But though the Church of Scotland was acknowledged by the different Protestant sovereigns, and by Anne among the rest, to be the best friend of their cause; and though Dr. Calamy, who visited Scotland about this period, states it was a very common complaint that there was a want of places of worship, and speaks of the plainly over-crowded churches of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen; yet the Church of Scotland was abandoned to her own private resources, heavily as these were already tasked.

Nay, what was worse than all, instead of receiving any aid from public funds, in 1711, the Act restoring Lay Patronage, one of the most obnoxious and hateful measures which could be proposed, was hastily and treacherously carried through Parliament. This, as now appears from the Lockhart Papers, was the doing of the Jacobites, to alienate the people of Scotland from the Church, and to weaken her. Bolingbroke, the infidel, who afterwards fled to France in dread of an impeachment and the scaffold, had a chief share in the work-thus illustrating what has been often illustrated since the close connection between Popery and Infidelity, and the deadly hatred of both to evangelical religion. In its object, origin, progress, and result, this was one of the most iniquitous measures which ever passed the British LegislaIt proceeded on falsehood, and was carried by treachery and fraud. It proved a severe blow to the Church of

ture.

Scotland-more fatal to her true interests than all the preceding persecution. Evangelical religion grew in spite of the onc-it withered under the other. The measure was so hateful, that for twenty years no party scarcely dared to act upon it; and for great part of a century it was the object of regular annual complaint and protest in the General Assembly. Many efforts were made to obtain its repeal, and repeatedly there was the promise of success. The family of Argyle, to which the Church had been so much indebted in the former century, strange to say, after the act was passed, were its great supporters. But for them, Wodrow states in his unpublished Analecta, it might have been abrogated. Thus does God, in his providence, stain the glory of man, and forbid his Church to idolize any family, however noble. Most destructive as the measure has proved in its operation, it was not all that the Jacobite party contemplated at the time. They had another bill in prospect for the abolition of the General Assembly-a Presbyterian Court which, as one of the bulwarks of the national liberties, has ever been a thorn in the flesh to the friends of despotism, whether civil or ecclesiastical. It was intended, too, that the evangelical Dissenters should be put down. They had, in 1701, through Sir Thomas Abney, Lord Mayor of London, one of their number, lent an important influence, by sending an address from the city, in encouraging William, then on the Continent, in uniting the Protestant powers, and so in securing the Protestant succession. Accordingly, the same semiPopish Ministry and Parliament which fixed the yoke of lay-patronage around the neck of the Church of Scotland, brought in, first, what was called an "occasional bill;" then

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a schism bill," which deprived the Dissenters of control over the education of their children; and prepared to bring in another bill, to rob them of the right of voting in all elections! These shameful projects against the best friends of the Hanoverian succession, were, in the providence of God, cut short by the sudden death of the Queen. But the measures which were carried show how many hostile influences were directed against the Church of Scotland, while they must have operated very injuriously to her interests. It was in the midst of them all that she held on her course so nobly and successfully. Doubtless it was her growing progress and power in the country, which alarmed the adversary, and led to those more violent proceedings to which I have just referred. Alas! these measures have been too successful.

The external evils to the country of a Pretender's invasion may soon have been overcome, fears may have been dissipated, rebellion extinguished, peace restored; but the moral and religious evils of the act 1711, though longer of showing themselves, though quiet and silent, have been more permanently disastrous. They poisoned the Church, which alone can give true life to the State, and all but destroyed her. It is indeed no small proof of her vital power, that she has survived such miserable maltreatment-that, like the Christianity which she is set up to diffuse, she lives, in spite of all the efforts which have been made, some wilful, some unintentional, to rob her of life.

The union, too, between the kingdoms, which has proved the source of so many advantages to the State, and to the accomplishment of which the Church so generously lent her aid, and which she maintained after the gross violation of its provision by the Patronage Act of Queen Anne, even the union has been in various respects adverse to the Church. It has withdrawn the education of the greater part of the aristocracy from her control, and placed it under Episcopal guidance. Had Wodrow's idea been acted on, and resident commissioners to look after the interests of the national Church of Scotland been appointed in London, and Scottish churches been reared and ably supplied in the metropolis, for the use of the Scottish nobility, and members of Parliament, and merchants, the evil might have been in a great measure prevented. But little or nothing of this kind was done, and hence a large number of influential families have been lost to the Church of Scotland: not a few have become keen opponents. It is a remarkable fact, that between the years 1670 and 1736, there were not less than twenty of the leading Scottish nobility-two dukes, two marquises, eleven earls, and five lords-educated in Glasgow College alone; while it is believed there are not as many educated now in the whole four Universities of Scotland, in the same space of time. Various and adverse, then, have been the influences with which the Church of Scotland has had to contend, from the Revolution of 1688 to 1715, and most creditable the place which she has been enabled to maintain, and the moral and religious good which she has been honoured to work out for the nation in spite of them all. How different her position and success from that of the poor and sinking Church of France in the same period!

CHAPTER VI.

FROM 1714 TO 1755.

THE next period in the history of the French Protestant Church, to which I must direct the attention of the reader, is the period embraced by the life and reign of Louis XV., extending from 1714 to 1774, being a space of sixty years. In the present chapter I come down to 1755, as a pretty good division. The first part of it was under a Regency. It might have been hoped, that the miserable condition of the country at the death of Louis XIV. would have mitigated the spirit of persecution-and certainly there was a little relaxation under the Regency of the Duke of Orleans, who, though personally a wretched profligate, saw the impolicy of violence, and repeatedly expressed himself in favourable terms towards the Protestants; but any gleam of sunshine

was soon overcast.

It is interesting to mark the ebbs and flows of persecution in the period now under review. God's dispensations to his people are at once merciful and trying. Under the Duke of Orleans, who was the first Regent, there were nine years of comparative quiet and freedom. He is followed in 1723,, by the Duke of Bourbon, who exercised a merciless severity for three years. Then come eighteen years of peace under Cardinal Fleury, which brings the history down to 1744, when the spirit of persecution is again evoked in its ancient horrors, and continued, with greater or less violence, durirg the rest of the long reign of Louis XV. Not a little in these different changes seems to have depended on the personal character of the Regent or Prime minister. It may seem strange how the happiness of so large a body of people should be suspended on the humour or temperament of a single individual. But thus has it always been under the providence of God. And surely such mystery of dispensation teaches the necessity of an overruling Providence, and of earnest and persevering intercession with God on behalf of civil rulers. It is not always necessary that they be Christian men, in order to protect, or at least not to persecute the saints of God. They may, like the Duke of Orleans, who was, as we have stated, a miserable profligate, be influenced by other considerations adapted to his character,